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Spine: 1.776"

DVD and CD-ROM Included Run or install 18 different Linux distributions from the multi-boot DVD and CD-ROM!

DVD and CD-ROM Included

Christopher Negus

Get in on the Linux phenomenon! Play music and games, publish on paper or on the Web, and communicate over the Internet. This comprehensive book includes step-by-step instructions and software for 18 diﬀerent Linux distributions. Whether you are an enterprising do-it-yourselfer or an aspiring Linux professional, you can start here on your path to software freedom. • • • • • • •

Master Linux for desktops, servers, and workstations Find, install, and use loads of free and open source software Create your own cool apps with useful programming tools Launch all your music, video, images, and documents in Linux Browse, e-mail, or chat over the Internet from a Linux desktop Set up your own e-mail and Web (LAMP) servers Make safe connections with firewalls and other security tools

• To try out Linux, boot directly KNOPPIX, openSUSE, Ubuntu, Gentoo, BackTrack, and other live Linux distributions • To keep Linux permanently, install Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Debian GNU, Damn Small Linux, Slackware Linux, and other distributions to your hard disk

www.wiley.com/go/linuxbible2009

Shelving Category: COMPUTERS/ Operating Systems/Linux Reader Level: Beginning to Advanced

$59.99 USA $65.99 Canada

DVD Includes • Ubuntu Linux (live/install) • Fedora Linux (install) • openSUSE (live/install) • KNOPPIX (live/install) • Freespire (live/install) • Gentoo Linux (live/install) • Slackware® Linux (install) • BackTrack (live) • Mandriva One (live/install) • Mepis (live/install) • AntiX (live/install) • Puppy Linux (live/install) CD-ROM Includes • Debian GNU/Linux (live/install) • Damn Small Linux (live/install) • SLAX (live) • SystemRescueCd (live) • INSERT (live) • Coyote Linux (floppy firewall) System Requirements: • All software built for x86 computers • See chapters on each distribution for system requirements

®

A total of 18 different Linux distributions are included on the DVD and CD-ROM.

What’s on the DVD and CD-ROM?

Linux

Run the world’s most popular free operating system on your own computer

2009 Edition

Linux 2009 Edition

Boot up to Ubuntu®, Fedora®, KNOPPIX, Debian®, openSUSE®, and 13 Other Distributions Start up a Linux desktop or server computer Migrate easily from Windows or Mac OS ®

Negus

®

Try tons of Linux apps, then install to hard disk

The book you need to succeed!

®

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Linux Bible ®

2009 Edition

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Linux Bible ®

2009 Edition

Boot Up to Ubuntu , Fedora , KNOPPIX, Debian , SUSE , and 13 Other Distributions ®

®

®

®

Christopher Negus

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Linux® Bible 2009 Edition Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc. 10475 Crosspoint Boulevard Indianapolis, IN 46256 www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2009 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-0-470-37367-5 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions. Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. For general information on our other products and services please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002. Trademarks: Wiley, the Wiley logo, Wrox, the Wrox logo, Wrox Programmer to Programmer, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

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As always, I dedicate this book to my wife, Sheree.

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About the Author Chris Negus has written or co-written dozens of books on Linux and UNIX, including Red Hat Linux Bible (all editions), Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible, Linux Troubleshooting Bible, Linux Toys, and Linux Toys II. Last year, Chris co-authored four books for the new Toolbox series for power users: Fedora Linux Toolbox, SUSE Linux Toolbox, Ubuntu Linux Toolbox, and BSD UNIX Toolbox. For eight years, Chris worked with the organization at AT&T that developed UNIX before moving to Utah to help contribute to Novell’s UnixWare project in the early 1990s. When not writing about Linux, Chris enjoys playing soccer and just hanging out with his family.

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Credits

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Acquisitions Editor Jenny Watson

Vice President and Executive Publisher Joseph B. Wikert

Development Editor Sara Shlaer

Project Coordinator, Cover Lynsey Stanford

Technical Editor Emmett Dulaney

Compositor Chris Gillespie, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Production Editor Liz Britten

Proofreader Kathryn Duggan

Copy Editor Nancy Rapoport

Indexer Jack Lewis

Editorial Manager Mary Beth Wakefield

Media Development Project Manager Laura Moss-Hollister

Production Manager Tim Tate

Media Development Associate Producer Shawn Patrick

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher Richard Swadley

Cover Image Joyce Haughey Cover Designer Michael Trent

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Acknowledgments I consider anyone who has contributed to the free and open source software community to be a contributor to the book you are holding. The backbone of any Linux distribution is formed by the organizations that produce the distributions, the major projects included in Linux, and the thousands of people who give their time and code to support Linux. So, thanks to you all! I’d like to acknowledge several contributors for their participation in previous editions. Wayne Tucker wrote and then updated the chapters on Debian, LAMP servers, and mail servers. Bill von Hagen contributed updates to the SUSE, Yellow Dog, and Ubuntu chapters. Emmett Dulaney served as technical editor to this edition. Thanks to the folks at Wiley for helping me press through the project. Jenny Watson helped me schedule the project so I could do the major rewrite needed to get all the latest Linux innovations in the book. Sara Shlaer did her usual great job keeping the project moving under a very challenging schedule. Liz Britten shepherded the book through the production process. Thanks to Margot Maley Hutchison and Maureen Maloney from Waterside Productions for contracting the book for me with Wiley. And finally, special thanks to my wife, Sheree. There’s no way I could do the work I do without the solid support I get on the home front. I love you, and thanks for taking such good care of Seth, Caleb, and me.

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Introduction .............................................................................................................................xxvii

Part I: Getting off the Ground with Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1: Starting with Linux ......................................................................................................3 Chapter 2: Linux Projects, Activities, and Careers .......................................................................15

Part II: Running a Linux Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Chapter 3: Getting into the Desktop ............................................................................................ 35 Chapter 4: Playing Music and Video ............................................................................................ 81 Chapter 5: Working with Words and Images ............................................................................. 117 Chapter 6: E-Mailing and Web Browsing ................................................................................... 147 Chapter 7: Gaming with Linux .................................................................................................. 179

Part III: Learning System Administration Skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Chapter 8: Installing Linux ........................................................................................................207 Chapter 9: Running Commands from the Shell .........................................................................237 Chapter 10: Learning Basic Administration ...............................................................................285 Chapter 11: Getting on the Internet ........................................................................................... 335 Chapter 12: Securing Linux ....................................................................................................... 359

Part IV: Setting Up Linux Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407 Chapter 13: Running a Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) Server .................................409 Chapter 14: Running a Mail Server ............................................................................................ 431 Chapter 15: Running a Print Server ...........................................................................................447 Chapter 16: Running a File Server .............................................................................................469

Part V: Choosing and Installing Different Linux Distributions . . 503 Chapter 17: Running Ubuntu Linux...........................................................................................505 Chapter 18: Running Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux ......................................................523 Chapter 19: Running Debian GNU/Linux ..................................................................................547 Chapter 20: Running SUSE and openSUSE Linux .....................................................................571 Chapter 21: Running KNOPPIX .................................................................................................585 Chapter 22: Running Yellow Dog Linux .....................................................................................607 Chapter 23: Running Gentoo Linux ........................................................................................... 619 Chapter 24: Running Slackware Linux....................................................................................... 641

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Contents at a Glance

Chapter 25: Running Freespire and Xandros ............................................................................. 657 Chapter 26: Running Mandriva..................................................................................................667 Chapter 27: Running a Linux Firewall/Router ...........................................................................681 Chapter 28: Running Bootable Linux Distributions ................................................................... 707

Part VI: Programming in Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 727 Chapter 29: Programming Environments and Interfaces ...........................................................729 Chapter 30: Programming Tools and Utilities ............................................................................759 Appendix A: Media ....................................................................................................................789 Appendix B: Linux History and Background..............................................................................799 Index .......................................................................................................................................... 819

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxvii

Part I: Getting off the Ground with Linux

1

Chapter 1: Starting with Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Taking Your First Step ..........................................................................................................4 What Comes in Linux Systems? ..................................................................................4 What Do You Need to Get Started? .............................................................................5 Starting Right Now .....................................................................................................6 Understanding Linux ......................................................................................................... 10 What’s So Great About Linux? ............................................................................................13 Summary ............................................................................................................................ 14

Chapter 2: Linux Projects, Activities, and Careers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Making Things with Linux ................................................................................................. 16 Linux in Outer Space ................................................................................................ 16 Linux in Gadgets ...................................................................................................... 17 Linux in Projects.......................................................................................................19 Getting Involved with Linux .............................................................................................. 21 Joining a Linux User Group ......................................................................................21 Joining Linux Communities .....................................................................................22 Companies and Groups Supporting Linux ...............................................................22 Keeping Up with Linux ......................................................................................................23 Major Linux Projects................................................................................................. 24 Exploring Linux Distributions ..................................................................................25 Linux in the Real World ..................................................................................................... 27 Linux in Schools ....................................................................................................... 27 Linux in Small Business............................................................................................28 Linux in the Enterprise.............................................................................................29 Becoming a Linux Professional ...........................................................................................30 Summary ............................................................................................................................ 31

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Contents

Part II: Running a Linux Desktop

33

Chapter 3: Getting into the Desktop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Understanding Your Desktop ............................................................................................. 35 Starting the Desktop...........................................................................................................36 Boot to the Desktop ..................................................................................................36 Boot to a Graphical Login .........................................................................................37 Boot to a Text Prompt ...............................................................................................39 K Desktop Environment .....................................................................................................39 Using the KDE Desktop ............................................................................................40 Managing Files with the Dolphin and Konqueror.....................................................44 Using the Dolphin File Manager ...............................................................................44 Using the Konqueror Web Browser/File Manager .....................................................49 Managing the KDE Desktop .....................................................................................52 Configuring the Desktop ..........................................................................................54 The GNOME Desktop ........................................................................................................56 Using the Metacity Window Manager .......................................................................58 Using the GNOME Panels .........................................................................................60 Using the Nautilus File Manager...............................................................................64 3D Effects with AIGLX .............................................................................................67 Changing GNOME Preferences ................................................................................69 Exiting GNOME ....................................................................................................... 70 Configuring a GNOME Online Desktop.............................................................................71 Configuring Your Own Desktop.........................................................................................73 Configuring X ...........................................................................................................73 Choosing a Window Manager...................................................................................77 Choosing Your Personal Window Manager...............................................................79 Getting More Information ..................................................................................................79 Summary ............................................................................................................................80

Chapter 4: Playing Music and Video. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Playing Digital Media and Obeying the Law ......................................................................82 Copyright Protection Issues ......................................................................................82 Exploring Codecs .....................................................................................................84 Playing Music .....................................................................................................................85 Using Sound Systems in Linux .................................................................................86 Adjusting Sound with PulseAudio ............................................................................86 Setting Up Audio Cards ............................................................................................88 Choosing an Audio CD Player ..................................................................................89 Using MIDI Audio Players.........................................................................................96 Performing Audio File Conversion and Compression ...............................................96 Recording and Ripping Music ............................................................................................99 Creating an Audio CD with cdrecord .....................................................................100 Ripping CDs with Grip ........................................................................................... 101 Creating CD Labels with cdlabelgen....................................................................... 103

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Contents

Working with TV, Video, and Digital Imaging .................................................................104 Watching TV with tvtime .......................................................................................104 Video Conferencing with Ekiga ..............................................................................106 Watching Movies and Video .............................................................................................108 Watching Video with xine ......................................................................................108 Using Totem Movie Player ...................................................................................... 112 Using a Digital Camera .................................................................................................... 113 Displaying Images in gThumb ................................................................................ 113 Using Your Camera as a Storage Device .................................................................. 114 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 115

Chapter 5: Working with Words and Images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Desktop Publishing in Linux ............................................................................................ 117 Using Text Editors and Notepads............................................................................ 118 Using Word Processors ........................................................................................... 119 Transitioning Documents from Windows ............................................................... 124 Converting Documents ...........................................................................................126 Building Structured Documents .............................................................................128 Doing Page Layout with Scribus .............................................................................132 Working with Graphics ....................................................................................................134 Manipulating Images with GIMP ............................................................................134 Creating Vector Graphic Images with Inkscape ......................................................136 Acquiring Screen Captures .....................................................................................138 Viewing Images ......................................................................................................139 Displaying PDF and PostScript Documents ..................................................................... 141 Using the ghostscript and gv Commands ............................................................... 141 Using Adobe Reader ............................................................................................... 141 Using Scanners with SANE .............................................................................................. 143 Web Publishing ................................................................................................................144 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 145

Chapter 6: E-Mailing and Web Browsing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Using E-Mail..................................................................................................................... 147 Choosing an E-Mail Client...................................................................................... 147 Getting Here from Windows................................................................................... 149 Getting Started with E-Mail ....................................................................................150 Tuning Up E-Mail ................................................................................................... 151 Reading E-Mail with Thunderbird ..........................................................................152 Managing E-Mail in Evolution ................................................................................158 Reading E-Mail with SeaMonkey Mail .................................................................... 162 Working with Text-Based E-Mail Readers .............................................................. 162 Choosing a Web Browser ..................................................................................................164 Exploring the SeaMonkey Suite ........................................................................................ 165 Using Firefox .................................................................................................................... 166 Setting Up Firefox ...................................................................................................168 Securing Firefox...................................................................................................... 172

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Contents

Tips for Using Firefox ............................................................................................. 173 Using Firefox Controls ............................................................................................ 174 Improving Firefox Browsing ................................................................................... 175 Doing Cool Things with Firefox ............................................................................. 176 Using Text-Based Web Browsers....................................................................................... 177 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 178

Chapter 7: Gaming with Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Jumping into Linux Gaming............................................................................................. 179 Overview of Linux Gaming .............................................................................................. 181 Basic Linux Gaming Information ..................................................................................... 182 Choosing Gaming Hardware for Linux ............................................................................184 Running Open Source Linux Games ................................................................................ 185 GNOME Games ......................................................................................................186 KDE Games ............................................................................................................ 187 Games in Fedora .....................................................................................................188 Commercial Linux Games ................................................................................................ 195 Getting Started with Commercial Games in Linux ................................................. 195 Playing Commercial Linux Games ........................................................................196 id Software Games .................................................................................................. 197 Playing TransGaming and Cedega Games ..............................................................198 Loki Software Game Demos....................................................................................200 Summary ..........................................................................................................................204

Part III: Learning System Administration Skills

205

Chapter 8: Installing Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Choosing a Linux Distribution .........................................................................................208 Linux at Work.........................................................................................................208 Other Distributions ................................................................................................209 Getting Your Own Linux Distribution..............................................................................209 Finding Another Linux Distribution ....................................................................... 210 Understanding What You Need .............................................................................. 210 Downloading the Distribution ................................................................................ 211 Burning the Distribution to CD .............................................................................. 212 Exploring Common Installation Topics ............................................................................ 213 Knowing Your Computer Hardware ....................................................................... 213 Upgrading or Installing from Scratch ..................................................................... 215 Dual Booting with Windows or Just Linux? ........................................................... 215 Using Installation Boot Options ............................................................................. 217 Partitioning Hard Drives......................................................................................... 217 Using LILO or GRUB Boot Loaders.........................................................................225 Configuring Networking ........................................................................................235 Configuring Other Administrative Features ...........................................................235 Installing from the Linux Bible CD or DVD ......................................................................236 Summary ..........................................................................................................................236

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Contents

Chapter 9: Running Commands from the Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237 Starting a Shell .................................................................................................................238 Using the Shell Prompt ...........................................................................................238 Using a Terminal Window ......................................................................................239 Using Virtual Terminals .........................................................................................240 Choosing Your Shell .........................................................................................................240 Using bash (and Earlier sh) Shells ........................................................................... 241 Using tcsh (and Earlier csh) Shells .......................................................................... 241 Using ash ................................................................................................................ 242 Using ksh ................................................................................................................ 242 Using zsh ................................................................................................................ 242 Exploring the Shell ........................................................................................................... 242 Checking Your Login Session ................................................................................. 242 Checking Directories and Permissions ................................................................... 243 Checking System Activity ....................................................................................... 245 Exiting the Shell .....................................................................................................246 Using the Shell in Linux ................................................................................................... 247 Locating Commands ..............................................................................................248 Rerunning Commands ...........................................................................................250 Connecting and Expanding Commands .................................................................256 Creating Your Shell Environment .....................................................................................259 Configuring Your Shell ...........................................................................................259 Using Shell Environment Variables.........................................................................263 Managing Background and Foreground Processes .................................................266 Working with the Linux File System ................................................................................268 Creating Files and Directories ................................................................................ 270 Moving, Copying, and Deleting Files...................................................................... 278 Using the vi Text Editor.................................................................................................... 278 Starting with vi ....................................................................................................... 279 Moving Around the File..........................................................................................282 Searching for Text ...................................................................................................282 Using Numbers with Commands ...........................................................................283 Summary ..........................................................................................................................283

Chapter 10: Learning Basic Administration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Graphical Administration Tools .......................................................................................286 Using Web-Based Administration...........................................................................286 Graphical Administration with Different Distributions ..........................................287 Using the root Login......................................................................................................... 291 Becoming Root from the Shell (su Command)........................................................292 Allowing Limited Administrative Access ................................................................293 Exploring Administrative Commands, Configuration Files, and Log Files ......................294 Administrative Commands .....................................................................................294 Administrative Configuration Files.........................................................................295 Administrative Log Files .........................................................................................299

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Contents

Using sudo and Other Administrative Logins .................................................................300 Administering Your Linux System ....................................................................................303 Creating User Accounts ....................................................................................................303 Adding Users with useradd ....................................................................................303 Setting User Defaults ..............................................................................................307 Modifying Users with usermod ..............................................................................309 Deleting Users with userdel .................................................................................... 310 Configuring Hardware ..................................................................................................... 310 Managing Removable Hardware ............................................................................. 311 Working with Loadable Modules ............................................................................ 314 Managing File Systems and Disk Space ............................................................................ 317 Mounting File Systems............................................................................................ 319 Using the mkfs Command to Create a File System .................................................326 Adding a Hard Disk ................................................................................................ 327 Checking System Space ..........................................................................................330 Monitoring System Performance....................................................................................... 332 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 333

Chapter 11: Getting on the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Connecting to the Network ..............................................................................................336 Connecting via Dial-Up Service .............................................................................336 Connecting a Single Computer to Broadband ......................................................... 337 Connecting Multiple Computers to Broadband ......................................................338 Connecting Servers .................................................................................................339 Connecting Other Equipment ................................................................................ 341 Using Ethernet Connections to the Internet .....................................................................342 Configuring Ethernet During Installation ..............................................................342 Configuring Ethernet from the Desktop .................................................................342 Using Network Configuration GUI in Fedora .........................................................344 Identifying Other Computers (Hosts and DNS) ......................................................345 Using the Network Settings GUI in Ubuntu ...........................................................347 Understanding Your Internet Connection ...............................................................348 Using Dial-Up Connections to the Internet ...................................................................... 351 Getting Information ................................................................................................ 351 Setting Up Dial-Up PPP .......................................................................................... 352 Creating a Dial-Up Connection with the Internet Configuration Wizard ............... 353 Launching Your PPP Connection ............................................................................ 355 Launching Your PPP Connection on Demand......................................................... 355 Checking Your PPP Connection ..............................................................................356 Checking That Your Modem Was Detected ............................................................356 Connecting to the Internet with Wireless......................................................................... 357 Summary ..........................................................................................................................358

Chapter 12: Securing Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Linux Security Checklist ..................................................................................................360 Finding Distribution-Specific Security Resources...................................................363 Finding General Security Resources .......................................................................364

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Contents

Using Linux Securely .......................................................................................................365 Using Password Protection .....................................................................................365 Choosing Good Passwords .....................................................................................365 Using a Shadow Password File ................................................................................367 Using Log Files .................................................................................................................369 The Role of syslogd .................................................................................................372 Redirecting Logs to a Loghost with syslogd ............................................................372 Understanding the messages Log File ..................................................................... 374 Using Secure Shell Tools................................................................................................... 374 Starting the SSH Service ......................................................................................... 375 Using the ssh, sftp, and scp Commands ................................................................. 375 Using ssh, scp, and sftp without Passwords ............................................................377 Securing Linux Servers..................................................................................................... 378 Controlling Access to Services with TCP Wrappers................................................ 378 Understanding Attack Techniques .......................................................................... 381 Protecting Against Denial-of-Service Attacks .........................................................382 Protecting Against Distributed DoS Attacks ...........................................................385 Protecting Against Intrusion Attacks ......................................................................389 Securing Servers with SELinux ..............................................................................392 Protecting Web Servers with Certificates and Encryption .....................................393 Using Linux Live CD Security Tools .................................................................................403 Advantages of Security Live CDs ............................................................................403 Using INSERT to Check for Rootkits ......................................................................403 Summary ..........................................................................................................................405

Part IV: Setting Up Linux Servers

407

Chapter 13: Running a Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) Server . . . 409 Components of a LAMP Server......................................................................................... 410 Apache .................................................................................................................... 410 MySQL.................................................................................................................... 410 PHP......................................................................................................................... 411 Setting Up Your LAMP Server .......................................................................................... 411 Installing Apache .................................................................................................... 412 Installing PHP......................................................................................................... 412 Installing MySQL.................................................................................................... 414 Operating Your LAMP Server ........................................................................................... 414 Editing Your Apache Configuration Files................................................................ 415 Adding a Virtual Host to Apache ............................................................................ 417 User Content and the userdir Setting...................................................................... 418 Installing a Web Application: Coppermine Photo Gallery ...................................... 419 Troubleshooting ...............................................................................................................422 Configuration Errors...............................................................................................422 Access Forbidden and Server Internal Errors.......................................................... 424

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Contents

Securing Your Web Traffic with SSL/TLS .........................................................................425 Generating Your Keys ............................................................................................. 427 Configuring Apache to Support SSL/TLS ...............................................................428 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 429

Chapter 14: Running a Mail Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431 Internet E-Mail’s Inner Workings ..................................................................................... 431 About the System and the Software Used ......................................................................... 433 Preparing Your System ..................................................................................................... 433 Configuring DNS for Direct Delivery ......................................................................434 Configuring for Retrieval from a Mail Host ............................................................ 435 Installing and Configuring the Mail Server Software ....................................................... 435 Installing Exim and Courier ................................................................................... 435 Installing ClamAV and SpamAssassin ....................................................................438 Testing and Troubleshooting ............................................................................................440 Checking Logs ........................................................................................................440 Common Errors (and How to Fix Them) ................................................................ 441 Configuring Mail Clients ..................................................................................................444 Configuring Fetchmail ...........................................................................................444 Configuring Web-Based Mail .................................................................................445 Securing Communications with SSL/TLS ........................................................................445 Summary ..........................................................................................................................446

Chapter 15: Running a Print Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447 Common UNIX Printing Service .....................................................................................448 Setting Up Printers ...........................................................................................................449 Using Web-Based CUPS Administration ................................................................449 Using the Printer Configuration Window ...............................................................452 Working with CUPS Printing ...........................................................................................459 Configuring the CUPS Server (cupsd.conf) ............................................................460 Starting the CUPS Server ........................................................................................461 Configuring CUPS Printer Options Manually ........................................................462 Using Printing Commands ...............................................................................................463 Printing with lpr .....................................................................................................463 Listing Printer Status with lpc ................................................................................464 Removing Print Jobs with lprm ..............................................................................464 Configuring Print Servers.................................................................................................465 Configuring a Shared CUPS Printer .......................................................................465 Configuring a Shared Samba Printer ......................................................................467 Summary ..........................................................................................................................468

Chapter 16: Running a File Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469 Setting Up an NFS File Server .......................................................................................... 470 Getting NFS ............................................................................................................ 472 Sharing NFS File Systems ....................................................................................... 472 Using NFS File Systems .......................................................................................... 477 Unmounting NFS File Systems ...............................................................................482 Other Cool Things to Do with NFS ........................................................................483

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Contents

Setting Up a Samba File Server .........................................................................................484 Getting and Installing Samba .................................................................................485 Configuring Samba with SWAT..............................................................................486 Working with Samba Files and Commands............................................................495 Using Samba Shared Directories .............................................................................498 Troubleshooting Your Samba Server .......................................................................499 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 501

Part V: Choosing and Installing Different Linux Distributions

503

Chapter 17: Running Ubuntu Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 Overview of Ubuntu .........................................................................................................506 Ubuntu Releases .....................................................................................................506 Ubuntu Installer .....................................................................................................507 Ubuntu as a Desktop ..............................................................................................508 Ubuntu as a Server .................................................................................................508 Ubuntu Spin-Offs ................................................................................................... 510 Challenges Facing Ubuntu...................................................................................... 510 Installing Ubuntu ............................................................................................................. 512 Starting with Ubuntu ....................................................................................................... 516 Trying Out the Desktop .......................................................................................... 517 Adding More Software ............................................................................................ 518 Getting More Information about Ubuntu ......................................................................... 521 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 521

Chapter 18: Running Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 Digging into Features .......................................................................................................525 Red Hat Installer (Anaconda) .................................................................................525 Custom Spins, Install Sets, and Live CDs ...............................................................526 RPM Package Management .....................................................................................526 Latest Desktop Technology ..................................................................................... 527 System Configuration Tools ....................................................................................528 Going Forward with Fedora .............................................................................................529 Growing Community Support for Fedora ...............................................................530 Joining Fedora Special Interest Groups ...................................................................530 Forums and Mailing Lists ....................................................................................... 531 Fedora Comes of Age ........................................................................................................ 531 Installing Fedora .............................................................................................................. 533 Choosing Computer Hardware ...............................................................................533 Choosing an Installation Method............................................................................534 Choosing to Install or Upgrade ............................................................................... 535 Beginning the Installation ...................................................................................... 537 Running the Fedora Firstboot .................................................................................545 Adding Cool Stuff to Your Fedora Desktop .............................................................545 Summary ..........................................................................................................................546

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Chapter 19: Running Debian GNU/Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 Inside Debian GNU/Linux ...............................................................................................548 Debian Packages .....................................................................................................548 Debian Package Management Tools ........................................................................549 Debian Releases ...................................................................................................... 551 Getting Help with Debian ................................................................................................ 551 Installing Debian GNU/Linux .......................................................................................... 552 Hardware Requirements and Installation Planning ................................................ 552 Running the Installer .............................................................................................. 553 Managing Your Debian System ......................................................................................... 557 Configuring Network Connections .........................................................................558 Package Management Using APT ............................................................................ 561 Package Management Using dpkg ...........................................................................564 Installing Package Sets (Tasks) with tasksel............................................................567 Alternatives, Diversions, and Stat Overrides...........................................................567 Managing Package Configuration with debconf .....................................................569 Summary ..........................................................................................................................569

Chapter 20: Running SUSE and openSUSE Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 571 Understanding SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE ....................................................572 What’s in SUSE Distributions ...........................................................................................573 Installation and Configuration with YaST............................................................... 574 RPM Package Management ..................................................................................... 576 Automated Software Updates..................................................................................577 Managing Software with zypper ............................................................................ 578 Getting Support for SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE ............................................. 578 Installing openSUSE ......................................................................................................... 579 Before You Begin ..................................................................................................... 579 Starting Installation ................................................................................................580 Starting with openSUSE ...................................................................................................584 Summary ..........................................................................................................................584

Chapter 21: Running KNOPPIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585 KNOPPIX Features ...........................................................................................................586 Understanding KNOPPIX .................................................................................................586 Looking Inside KNOPPIX .......................................................................................586 What’s Cool About KNOPPIX .................................................................................588 Examining Challenges with KNOPPIX ...................................................................589 Seeing Where KNOPPIX Comes From....................................................................590 Exploring Uses for KNOPPIX ................................................................................. 591 Starting KNOPPIX ............................................................................................................592 Getting a Computer ................................................................................................592 Booting KNOPPIX ..................................................................................................593 Correcting Boot Problems.......................................................................................593

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Using KNOPPIX ...............................................................................................................598 Getting on the Network ..........................................................................................599 Installing Software in KNOPPIX.............................................................................600 Saving Files in KNOPPIX........................................................................................601 Keeping Your KNOPPIX Configuration ..................................................................603 Restarting KNOPPIX ..............................................................................................604 Summary ..........................................................................................................................605

Chapter 22: Running Yellow Dog Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607 Understanding Yellow Dog Linux .....................................................................................608 Going Forward with Yellow Dog ......................................................................................609 Digging into Yellow Dog ................................................................................................... 610 Installing Yellow Dog Linux ............................................................................................. 611 Hardware Support .................................................................................................. 612 Installing Yellow Dog Linux on a PowerStation ...................................................... 613 Updating Yellow Dog Linux ............................................................................................. 614 Running Mac Applications with Mac-on-Linux................................................................ 616 Support Options ............................................................................................................... 616 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 617

Chapter 23: Running Gentoo Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 619 Understanding Gentoo ..................................................................................................... 619 Gentoo’s Open Source Spirit ...................................................................................620 The Gentoo Community ......................................................................................... 621 Building, Tuning, and Tweaking Linux .................................................................. 621 Where Gentoo Is Used ............................................................................................622 What’s in Gentoo ..............................................................................................................623 Managing Software with Portage ............................................................................ 624 Finding Software Packages ..................................................................................... 624 New Gentoo Features ............................................................................................625 Installing Gentoo..............................................................................................................626 Getting Gentoo .......................................................................................................626 Starting Gentoo Installation from a Live CD........................................................... 627 Starting Gentoo Installation from a Minimal CD.................................................... 629 Getting Software with emerge.................................................................................638 Summary ..........................................................................................................................639

Chapter 24: Running Slackware Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 641 Getting into Slackware ..................................................................................................... 641 Characterizing the Slackware Community .......................................................................643 The Slackware Creator ............................................................................................643 Slackware Users ......................................................................................................645 Slackware Internet Sites ..........................................................................................645 Challenges of Using Slackware .........................................................................................646 Using Slackware as a Development Platform ....................................................................646

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Installing Slackware .........................................................................................................647 Getting Slackware ...................................................................................................647 New Features in Slackware 12.1 .............................................................................648 Hardware Requirements .........................................................................................648 Starting Installation ................................................................................................649 Starting with Slackware.................................................................................................... 653 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 655

Chapter 25: Running Freespire and Xandros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 657 Understanding Freespire ..................................................................................................658 Freespire’s Roots in Linspire ...................................................................................658 Installing Software with Click-N-Run ....................................................................660 Freespire Support ..................................................................................................661 Installing Freespire ..........................................................................................................661 Hardware Requirements .........................................................................................661 Trying Out Freespire ..............................................................................................662 Starting a Freespire Install ......................................................................................662 Summary ..........................................................................................................................666

Chapter 26: Running Mandriva . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 667 Mandriva Features ............................................................................................................667 Exploring Mandriva .........................................................................................................669 Mandriva Installer (DrakX) .................................................................................... 670 RPM Package Management with RPMDrake ...........................................................671 Mandriva Linux Control Center .............................................................................672 The Mandriva Community ...............................................................................................673 RPM Repository on Mandriva Club ........................................................................ 674 Mandriva Forums ................................................................................................... 674 Installing Mandriva Limited Edition ............................................................................... 674 The Right Hardware for Mandriva .......................................................................... 675 Installing Mandriva with the DrakX Installer ......................................................... 676 Summary .......................................................................................................................... 679

Chapter 27: Running a Linux Firewall/Router . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681 Understanding Firewalls ..................................................................................................682 Protecting Desktops with Firewalls ..................................................................................683 Starting Your Firewall in Fedora .............................................................................683 Configuring a Firewall in Mandriva .......................................................................685 Using Firewalls with iptables............................................................................................686 Starting with iptables..............................................................................................687 Using iptables to Do SNAT or IP Masquerading .....................................................692 Adding Modules with iptables ................................................................................693 Using iptables as a Transparent Proxy ....................................................................693 Using iptables for Port Forwarding .........................................................................694 Making a Coyote Linux Bootable Floppy Firewall ............................................................695 Creating a Coyote Linux Firewall ...........................................................................695 Building the Coyote Linux Floppy ..........................................................................696

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Running the Coyote Linux Floppy Firewall ............................................................ 702 Managing the Coyote Linux Floppy Firewall .......................................................... 703 Using Other Firewall Distributions ..................................................................................704 Summary ..........................................................................................................................706

Chapter 28: Running Bootable Linux Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 707 Overview of Bootable Linux Distributions .......................................................................708 Trying a Bootable Linux ...................................................................................................709 Showcasing Linux from a live CD ........................................................................... 710 Security and Rescue Bootables ............................................................................... 711 Demonstration Bootables ........................................................................................ 716 Multimedia Bootables ............................................................................................. 716 Tiny Desktops ......................................................................................................... 719 Special-Purpose Bootables................................................................................................722 Customizing a Bootable Linux..........................................................................................723 Building a Live CD with Fedora..............................................................................725 Summary ..........................................................................................................................726

Part VI: Programming in Linux

727

Chapter 29: Programming Environments and Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 729 Understanding Programming Environments ....................................................................729 Using Linux Programming Environments ........................................................................730 The Linux Development Environment .................................................................... 731 Graphical Programming Environments ..................................................................739 The Command-Line Programming Environment ...................................................744 Linux Programming Interfaces ......................................................................................... 745 Creating Command-Line Interfaces ........................................................................ 746 Creating Graphical Interfaces .................................................................................752 Application Programming Interfaces ...................................................................... 753 Summary ..........................................................................................................................758

Chapter 30: Programming Tools and Utilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 759 The Well-Stocked Toolkit .................................................................................................759 Using the GCC Compiler ..................................................................................................760 Compiling Multiple Source Code Files ................................................................... 762 GCC Command-Line Options ................................................................................764 Automating Builds with make ..........................................................................................766 Library Utilities ................................................................................................................768 The nm Command..................................................................................................770 The ar Command ....................................................................................................771 The ldd Command..................................................................................................771 The ldconfig Command ..........................................................................................772 Environment Variables and Configuration Files .....................................................772

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Source Code Control ........................................................................................................773 Source Code Control Using RCS .............................................................................773 Source Code Control with CVS ..............................................................................777 Debugging with GNU Debugger ......................................................................................780 Starting GDB........................................................................................................... 781 Inspecting Code in the Debugger ...........................................................................784 Examining Data ...................................................................................................... 785 Setting Breakpoints.................................................................................................786 Working with Source Code ....................................................................................788 Summary ..........................................................................................................................788

Appendix A: Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789 Appendix B: Linux History and Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 799 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 819

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I

nsert the DVD or CD that comes with this book into a PC. Within five minutes, you’ll be able to try out Linux with a full range of desktop applications. Within an hour, you can have a full-blown Linux desktop or server system installed on your computer. If you are like most of us who have been bitten by the Linux bug, you won’t ever look back. Linux Bible 2009 Edition is here to open your eyes to what Linux is, where it came from, and where it’s going. But, most of all, the book is here to hand you Linux and help you get started. Because Linux is the operating system of free speech and free choice, Linux Bible gives you choices in selecting the Linux that is right for you. On the DVD and CD that come with this book are 18 different Linux distributions that you are free to install, try out, and keep. You learn how those distributions are alike or different, and the book leads you through the basics of installing and setting up your Linux system as a: ■

Desktop computer user — You have a full range of office, music, gaming, graphics, and other applications to use.

■

Linux system administrator — Learn how to install software, use shell commands, configure system services, and secure your computers and networks.

■

Linux server administrator — Using some of the world’s best server software, you can set up your computer to be a Web server, file server, mail server, or print server.

■

Software developer — You can draw on thousands of open source programming tools to develop your own software applications.

The Linux systems you have in your hand don’t contain trialware or otherwise hobbled software. On the contrary, they feature software created by world-class development projects, the same teams that build the software that powers many professional businesses, schools, home desktops, and Internet service providers. In other words, this is truly first-rate software from developers who have made a commitment to producing software that can be used in the ways that you choose to use it. Most of the Linux distributions offered on the DVD and CD that come with this book are live CDs that let you try a Linux distribution without installing. Almost all of those live CDs include features that let you install the contents of those live CDs to your hard disk. For example, you can try out Fedora, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and Mandriva as live CDs, and then install those distributions permanently to your hard drive from icons on the desktops of those live CDs. Unlike some other books on Linux, this book doesn’t tie you to one Linux distribution. The book teaches you the essentials of Linux graphical desktop interfaces, shell commands, and basic system administration. Separate chapters break down many of the major Linux distributions

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Introduction

available today. Then descriptions of the major software projects in most Linux distributions (KDE and GNOME desktops, Apache Web servers, Samba file and printer sharing, and so on) guide you in setting up and using those features, regardless of which Linux you choose.

Understanding the Linux Mystique This book is designed to spark your imagination about what is possible with Linux, and then give you the software and instructions to jump right into Linux. From there, the approach is to help you learn by using it. In the first two chapters, you’ll learn a lot of exciting ways Linux is being used today and see who many of the major players are in the free and open source software (FOSS) world. You will see how people are adapting Linux to run on handhelds, mini laptops, 32- and 64-bit PCs, Macs, mainframes, and super computers. Linux is truly everywhere! However, if you are concerned that somehow “free” software is too good to be true, skip ahead for the moment to the brief history of Linux in Appendix B, which guides you through the strange and circuitous path of open source software development that led to the Linux phenomenon. If you are intrigued by what you learn, Chapter 2 tells you how you can become part of the open source and free software communities, whose stars are known by a single name (such as Linus) or a few initials (such as rms). You’ll find a staggering number of open source projects, forums, and mailing lists that are thriving today (and always looking for more people to get involved).

How This Book Is Organized Learn the basics of what goes into Linux and you will be able to use all sorts of devices and computers in the future. The book is organized in a way that enables you to start off at the very beginning with Linux, but still grow to the point where you can get going with some powerful server and programming features, if you care to. Part I includes two short chapters designed to open your eyes to what you can do with Linux, and then get your hands on it quickly. Those two chapters describe: ■

How others use Linux, how to transition to Linux from Windows, and how to start with Linux using the CD and DVD inside this book (Chapter 1).

■

What you can do, what you can make, and what you can become with Linux (Chapter 2).

In Part II, you start with details on how to use Linux desktops and associated applications. Chapters 3–7 describe: ■

The KDE, GNOME, and other desktop interfaces (Chapter 3)

■

Tools for playing music and video (Chapter 4)

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■

Desktop publishing and Web publishing using word processing, layout, drawing, and image manipulation tools, plus tools such as wikis, blogs, and content management systems for managing content online (Chapter 5)

■

Applications for e-mail and Web browsing (Chapter 6)

■

Desktop gaming applications (Chapter 7)

In Part III, you learn how to administer Linux systems, including: ■

Installing Linux systems (Chapter 8)

■

Using the shell (Chapter 9)

■

Doing basic administration (Chapter 10)

■

Connecting to the Internet (Chapter 11)

■

Securing your Linux system (Chapter 12)

Linux creates powerful servers, and in Part IV you learn to: ■

Set up a Web server using Apache, MySQL, and PHP in Linux (Chapter 13)

■

Run a mail server (Chapter 14)

■

Share printers with a CUPS print server (Chapter 15)

■

Share files with a Samba or NFS file server (Chapter 16)

If you don’t have Linux installed yet, this book helps you understand the different Linux distributions, and then install the systems you want from the DVD and CD included with this book. Part V (Chapters 17 through 28) describes each of those distributions and how to run them live or install them. If you are coming to Linux for its programming environment, Part VI provides chapters that describe: ■

Programming environments and interfaces (Chapter 29)

■

Programming tools and utilities (Chapter 30)

In addition, Appendix A tells you what’s on the DVD and CD, how to install from the DVD or CD, and how to burn additional installation CDs from the software that comes with this book. Appendix B provides history and background information about Linux.

What You Will Get from This Book By the time you finish this book, you’ll have a good basic understanding of many of the major features in Linux and how you can use them. If you decide then that you want to go a bit deeper into any Red Hat-sponsored distribution, Fedora 9 and Enterprise Linux Bible (Wiley, 2008) is a good next step, with content that includes how to set up many different types of Linux servers. You can find similar books for other distributions.

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If you are more technically oriented, Linux Troubleshooting Bible (Wiley, 2004) can be a good way to learn more advanced skills for securing and troubleshooting Linux systems. Or a Linux Toolbox book for Fedora, Ubuntu, BSD, or SUSE (Wiley, 2007 and 2008) can provide you with over 1000 Linux commands to help you become a Linux power user. If you are looking for some fun, try out some projects with an old PC and free software from Linux Toys II (Wiley, 2005).

Conventions Used in This Book Throughout the book, special typography indicates code and commands. Commands and code are shown in a monospaced font: This is how code looks.

In the event that an example includes both input and output, the monospaced font is still used, but input is presented in bold type to distinguish the two. Here’s an example: $ ftp ftp.handsonhistory.com Name (home:jake): jake Password: ******

As for styles in the text: ■

We highlight new terms and important words with italics when we introduce them.

■

We show keyboard strokes like this: Ctrl+A.

■

We show filenames, URLs, and code within the text like so: persistence.properties.

The following items are used to call your attention to points that are particularly important.

NOTE

TIP CAUTION CROSS-REF

A Note box provides extra information to which you need to pay special attention. A Tip box shows a special way of performing a particular task. A Caution box alerts you to take special care when executing a procedure, or damage to your computer hardware or software could result. A Cross-Reference box refers you to further information on a subject that you can find outside the current chapter.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

A Coming from Windows box provides tips to help you transfer your knowledge of Windows systems to the Linux world.

ON the CD-ROM

The On the CD and On the DVD icons point out features related to the media that accompany the book.

ON the DVD-ROM xxx

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Getting off the Ground with Linux IN THIS PART Chapter 1 Starting with Linux Chapter 2 Linux Projects, Activities, and Careers

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Starting with Linux

I

n only a few years, Linux has advanced from being considered a specialty operating system into the mainstream. Precompiled and configured Linux systems can be installed with no technical expertise. Versions of Linux run on all kinds of devices, from PCs to handhelds (see www.linuxdevices.com) to game consoles (such as PlayStation 3) to supercomputers. In short, Linux has become a system that can be run almost anywhere by almost anyone.

IN THIS CHAPTER Getting started with Linux Understanding Linux Linux features and advantages

On both desktop and server computers Linux has become a formidable operating system across a variety of business applications. Today, large enterprises can deploy thousands of systems using Linux distributions from companies such as Red Hat, Inc. and Novell, Inc. Small businesses can put together the mixture of office and Internet services they need to keep their costs down. The free and open source software (FOSS) development model that espoused sharing, freedom, and openness is now on a trajectory to surpass the quality of other operating systems outside of the traditional Linux servers and technical workstations. What were once weak components of Linux, such as easyto-use desktops and personal productivity applications, have improved at a rapid pace. In areas of security, usability, connectivity, and network services, Linux has continued to improve and outshine the competition. Computer industry heavy-hitters such as Microsoft and Oracle have taken notice of Linux. Microsoft has struck agreements with Linux companies including Novell and Xandros to form partnerships that primarily protect those companies against threatened Microsoft lawsuits. Oracle began producing its own Linux system called Unbreakable Linux, to try to stem the flow of customers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

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Part I

Getting off the Ground with Linux

What does this all add up to? A growing swirl of excitement around the operating system that the big guys can’t seem to get rid of. For people like you, who want the freedom to use your computer software as you like, it means great prospects for the future. Let this book help you grab your first look at the distributions, applications, services, and community that make up the phenomenon that has become Linux.

Taking Your First Step In your hands, you have 18 different Linux distributions (on CD and DVD), thousands of applications, and descriptions for getting it all running on your own computer. For you right now, the worldwide Linux phenomenon is just a reboot away. Linux Bible 2009 Edition brings you into the world of free and open source software that, through some strange twists and turns, has fallen most publicly under the “Linux” banner. Through descriptions and procedures, this book helps you: ■

Understand what people do with Linux and how you can use Linux for all your computing tasks.

■

Sort through the various distributions of Linux to choose one (or more) that is right for you. You get several Linux systems on this book’s CD and DVD. (Linux is all about choice, too!)

■

Try out Linux as a desktop computer, server computer, or programmer’s workstation.

■

Become connected to the open source software movement, as well as many separate high-quality software projects that are included with Linux.

What Comes in Linux Systems? Whether you are using Linux for the first time or just want to try out a new Linux distribution, Linux Bible 2009 Edition is your guide to using Linux and the latest open source technology. While different Linux distributions vary in the exact software they include, this book describes the most popular software available for Linux to: ■

Manage your desktop (menus, icons, windows, and so on)

■

Listen to music, watch video, and store and arrange digital photos

■

Create, lay out, manipulate, and publish documents and images on paper or on the Web

■

Browse the Web and send e-mail

■

Play games

■

Find thousands of other open source software packages you can get for free

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Starting with Linux

1

Because most Linux distributions also include features that let them act as servers (in fact, that’s one of the things Linux has always been best at), you’ll also learn about software available for Linux that lets you do the following: ■

Connect to the Internet or other network

■

Use Linux as a firewall and router to protect and manage your private network

■

Run a Web server (using Apache, MySQL, and PHP)

■

Run a mail server (using Exim or other mail transfer agent)

■

Run a print server (using Samba or CUPS)

■

Run a file server (using FTP or Samba)

■

Use the exact same enterprise-quality software used by major corporations (such as Google and Amazon.com), universities, and businesses of all sizes.

This book guides you through the basics of getting started with these Linux features, plus many more. Once you’ve been through the book, you should be proficient enough in the basics to track down answers to your more advanced questions through the volumes of man pages, FAQs, HOWTOs, and forums that cover different aspects of the Linux operating system. To get started with Linux right now, all you need is a standard PC with a bootable CD or DVD drive.

What Do You Need to Get Started? Although Linux will run great on many low-end computers (even some old 486s and early Pentiums), if you are completely new to Linux, I recommend that you start with a PC that has a little more muscle. Here’s why: ■

Full-blown Linux operating systems with complete GNOME or KDE desktop environments (see Chapter 3) perform poorly on slow CPUs and less than the recommended amount of RAM. The bells and whistles come at the price of processing power. Lighter-weight options do exist if you have limited resources.

■

You can use streamlined graphical Linux installations that will fit on small hard disks (as small as 100MB) and run fairly well on slow processors. Also, there are small live CD Linux distributions, such as Damn Small Linux (DSL), that can be copied to hard disk and run from there (read about some of these small “bootables” in Chapter 28). The 50MB DSL desktop system will run fine on old Pentium machines with little RAM. But if you want to add some of the more demanding applications to these small systems, such as OpenOffice.org office applications, you will find you need more than minimal computer hardware.

If you are starting with a 400 MHz Pentium II, your desktop will run slowly in default KDE or GNOME configurations with less than 128MB of RAM. A simpler desktop system, with just X and a window manager, will work, but won’t give you the full flavor of a Linux desktop. (See Chapter 3 for information about different desktop choices and features.)

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Part I

Getting off the Ground with Linux

The good news is that cheap computers that you can buy from Wal-Mart or other retailers start at less than $300. Those systems will perform better than most PCs you have laying around that are more than a few years old, and some even come with Linux pre-installed. The bottom line is that the less you know about Linux, the more you should try to have computer hardware that is up to spec in order to have a pleasant experience.

Starting Right Now If you are anxious to get started, insert either the DVD or CD accompanying this book into the appropriate drive on your PC and reboot. When you see the boot screen, press Enter. When the DVD or CD boots, the following happens, respectively: ■

KNOPPIX starts up. A fully functional KNOPPIX desktop Linux system will boot directly from the DVD. From that Linux system, you can do everything you’d expect to do from a modern desktop computing system: write documents, play music, communicate over the Internet, work with images, and so on. If you have a wired Ethernet connection that connects to the Internet when you start up Windows, most likely it will also connect automatically when KNOPPIX starts.

■

Damn Small Linux (DSL) starts up. This small, amazing desktop-oriented Linux system starts up directly from the CD that comes with this book. Besides being expandable and adaptable, DSL runs on everything from low-end PCs to powerful workstation hardware while being small enough to fit on a mini CD (only about 50MB in size).

What you have in front of you is a functioning desktop system that can be installed to your hard disk to use permanently, if you like. Thousands of software packages available for Linux can be added. Depending on your Linux system, installing extra software might just take a few clicks. The next sections step you through a few things you can do with KNOPPIX and DSL.

Trying KNOPPIX When KNOPPIX starts up, you bypass a login screen and go directly to a K Desktop Environment (KDE) that is loaded with free software for you to try. Figure 1-1 shows an example of the KNOPPIX KDE desktop with several applications running. If you have any trouble starting KNOPPIX, refer to Chapter 21 for descriptions of boot options to help you overcome certain problems (such as a garbled screen or hanging when certain hardware is encountered). That chapter also describes other KNOPPIX features.

NOTE

Here is a quick tour of the KNOPPIX desktop: ■

Browsing — Select the Konqueror icon from the bottom panel to open the Konqueror Web browser/file manager. The Konqueror window shown in Figure 1-1 displays the English version of the KNOPPIX Web site (http://knopper.net).

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Starting with Linux

1

FIGURE 1-1 The KNOPPIX Live Linux CD or DVD contains the KDE desktop and hundreds of applications.

■

Managing files — Select the Home icon from the bottom panel. A Konqueror window opens to show your home folder (/home/knoppix). You will typically save files and folders to your home folder. Because you are running KNOPPIX as a live CD, any files you create will be lost when you reboot if you don’t explicitly save them. Chapter 21 describes how to make a persistent desktop, so the files you create in KNOPPIX can be saved permanently.

■

Accessing disks — A live CD, such as KNOPPIX, is designed to run without touching the contents of your hard disk. However, if you have something on your hard disk you want to use with KNOPPIX (such as a music file or document), KNOPPIX makes it easy to do that. Icons on the left side of the desktop appear, representing every partition on your hard disk, as well as detected removable media (such as a USB flash drive). In Figure 1-1, Hard Disk icons hda1, hda2, and hda5 represent several partitions on your hard disk. Select an icon to display the contents of the partition in a file manager window. To be able to add content to that disk partition, right-click the partition and select Change Read/Write Mode.

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Part I

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■

Special Knoppix features — Because of the temporary nature of a live CD, settings have to be configured each time you boot, unless you take steps to save those settings. From the small penguin icon on the left side of the bottom panel, you can see a menu of selections to do special things to make the live CD work better. Select Configure ➪ Save KNOPPIX Configuration to save your settings to your hard disk or a USB drive so you can use those settings later. Other KNOPPIX features are also available from that menu. You can configure a persistent disk image, make a swap file, or configure printers, TV cards, or sound cards. You can also configure different services. Many of these features are described in Chapter 21.

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Running applications — Select the K icon from the lower-left corner of the panel to see a menu of available applications. Choose Settings to configure your desktop. Choose Office to select from several OpenOffice.org office applications for writing documents, using spreadsheets, drawing pictures, and building presentations. Try out some games from the Games menu.

When you are done trying KNOPPIX, select Log Out from the K menu and choose Turn Off Computer. After KNOPPIX shuts down, it will eject the disc. After you remove the disc, you can use your computer again with whatever operating system you have installed there.

Trying Damn Small Linux Because Damn Small Linux (DSL) is based on KNOPPIX, you may notice some similarities. DSL is smaller and faster, however, so you should get to the DSL desktop screen quicker. Instead of KDE, the DSL desktop features a lightweight window manager. Figure 1-2 shows an example of a DSL desktop with several applications open.

NOTE

Many of the same boot options that come with KNOPPIX will work with DSL, so check Chapter 21 if you have trouble booting DSL. For other descriptions of DSL, see Chapter 28.

Here are some things to try on your DSL desktop: ■

Web browsing — With an active wired Internet connection, you should be able to connect to the Internet automatically when DSL boots up. The Dillo Web browser opens to a page of basic DSL information. Continue to browse the Web from Dillo, or open the Firefox icon from the desktop to browse with Firefox instead.

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Install applications — Open the MyDSL icon from the desktop and then, when prompted, download the applications database. After that, select categories from the left column to look through listings of hundreds of applications you can add to DSL. When you find one you like, choose Install Selected to download and install it.

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Check out the desktop — On the desktop itself, view information about your computer (CPU Usage, RAM Usage, Swap Used, File systems, and so on) in the upper-right corner. Select DSL in the lower-left corner of the bottom panel to see a menu of available applications. Then try a few applications. You can view the same menu by right-clicking on the desktop.

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FIGURE 1-2 Damn Small Linux provides an efficient desktop Linux.

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Change settings — Select Setup from the main menu to adjust the date and time, change your desktop theme, configure your X display server, or set up a wireless or dial-up Internet connection.

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Control the system — Select System from the menu and choose Control Panel. From the Control Panel that appears, you can configure your printer, back up your files (remember that files disappear at reboot with live CDs if you don’t save them to disk or removable media), or start login (SSH) or FTP services. Return to the main menu and select Apps ➪ Tools to do some cool, specialized DSL features, such as install to your hard disk or a portable USB flash drive (pendrive). You can also remaster a MyDSL CD or make a boot floppy.

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Try applications — Figure 1-2 shows a couple of applications open on the DSL desktop. Select Games from the menu, and then try out a game such as Ace of Penguins Mastermind (shown in the upper-left portion of the figure) to guess a sequence of four colored blocks. Select Apps ➪ Graphics ➪ mtPaint to open a nice graphics application for manipulating images and drawing (shown here with a soccer ball image).

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Select the Exit icon from the desktop and choose Shutdown or Reboot to exit from DSL. Notice that the Backup box is checked. With that box checked, DSL gives you the option to save your files and settings (provided you set up a location to back up your files earlier from the Control Panel). With that information saved, the next time you boot DSL from that computer, you have those files and settings available.

Trying Other Linux Distributions There are many other Linux distributions besides KNOPPIX and DSL that you can try from the CD and DVD that come with this book. Ubuntu has a large, active following and can be run live from the DVD. Try Fedora or openSUSE if you want to see a Linux system that is being prepared for enterprise distributions (Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise, respectively). Gentoo and Slackware often appeal to technically oriented users. On small machines, distributions such as Puppy Linux or BackTrack may interest you. See Appendix A for information on those and other Linux systems included with this book.

Understanding Linux People who don’t know what Linux is sometimes ask me if it’s a program that runs on Microsoft Windows. When I tell them that Linux is, itself, an operating system like Windows and that they can remove (or never purchase) Windows, I sometimes get a surprised reaction: “A PC can run with nothing from Microsoft on it?” The answer is yes! The next question about Linux is often: “How can Linux be free?” While the full answer to that is a bit longer (and covered later), the short answer is: “Because the people who write the code license it to be freely distributed.” Keep in mind, however, that the critical issue relating to the word “free” is “freedom,” meaning that you are free to rebuild, reuse, reconfigure, and otherwise do what you like with the code. The only major responsibility is that if you change the software, you pass it forward so that others may benefit from your work as well. Linux is a full-blown operating system that is a free clone of the powerful and stable UNIX operating system. Start your computer with Linux, and Linux takes care of the operation of your PC and manages the following aspects of your computer: ■

Processor — Because Linux can run many processes from many different users at the same time (even with multiple CPUs on the same machine), Linux needs to be able to manage those processes. The Linux scheduler sets the priorities for running tasks and manages which processes run on which CPUs (if multiple processors are present). The scheduler can be tuned differently for different types of Linux systems. If it’s tuned properly, the most important processes get the quickest responses from the processor. For example, a Linux scheduler on a desktop system gives higher priority to things such as moving a window on the desktop than it does to a background file transfer.

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Memory — Linux tries to keep processes with the most immediate need in RAM, while managing how processes that exceed the available memory are moved to swap space. Swap space is a defined area on your hard disk that’s used to handle the overflow of running processes and data. When RAM is full, processes are placed in swap space. When swap space is full (something that you don’t want to happen), new processes can’t start up.

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Devices — Linux supports thousands of hardware devices, yet keeps the kernel a manageable size by including only a small set of drivers in the active kernel. Using loadable modules, the kernel can add support for other hardware as needed. Modules can be loaded and unloaded on demand, as hardware is added and removed. (The kernel, described in detail a bit later on, is the heart of a Linux operating system.)

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File systems — File systems provide the structure in which files are stored on hard disk, CD, DVD, floppy disks, or other media. Linux knows about different file system types (such as Linux ext3 and reiserfs file systems, or VFAT and NTFS from Windows systems) and how to manage them.

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Security — Like UNIX, Linux was built from the ground up to enable multiple users to access the system simultaneously. To protect each user’s resources, every file, directory, and application is assigned sets of read, write, and execute permissions that define who can access them. In a standard Linux system, the root user has access to the entire system, some special logins have access to control particular services (such as Apache for Web services), and users can be assigned permission individually or in groups. Recent features such as Security Enhanced Linux and AppArmor enable more refined tuning and protection in highly secure computing environments.

1

What I have just described are components that are primarily managed by what is referred to as the Linux kernel. In fact, the Linux kernel (which is still maintained by Linus Torvalds, who created the Linux kernel as a graduate student in Finland) is what gives Linux its name. The kernel is the software that starts up when you boot your computer and interfaces with the programs you use so they can communicate effectively and simply with your computer hardware.

NOTE

See Appendix B for historic details on how the kernel and other free software came together to create the Linux phenomenon.

Components such as administrative commands and applications from other free and open source software projects work with the kernel to make Linux a complete operating system. The GNU Project (www.gnu.org), in particular, contributed many implementations of standard UNIX components that are now in Linux. Apache, KDE, GNOME, and other major open source projects in Linux have also contributed to the success of Linux. (See Chapter 2 for an explanation of how open source projects work and how you can get involved in them.) Those other projects added such things as: ■

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) — Consisting of a graphical framework (typically the X Window System), window managers, panels, icons, and menus. GUIs enable you to use Linux with a keyboard and mouse combination, instead of just typing commands (as was done in the old days).

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Administrative utilities — Including hundreds (perhaps thousands) of commands and graphical windows to do such things as add users, manage disks, monitor the network, install software, and generally secure and manage your computer.

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Applications — Although no Linux distribution includes all of them, there are literally thousands of games, office productivity tools, Web browsers, chat windows, multimedia players, and other applications available for Linux.

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Programming tools — Including programming utilities for creating applications and libraries for implementing specialty interfaces.

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Server features — Enabling you to offer services from your Linux computer to another computer on the network. In other words, while Linux includes Web browsers to view Web pages, it can also be the computer that serves up Web pages to others. Popular server features include Web, mail, database, printer, file, DNS, and DHCP servers.

Once Linus Torvalds and friends had a working Linux kernel, pulling together a complete open source operating system was possible because so much of the available “free” software was: ■

Covered by the GNU Public License (GPL) or similar license — That allowed the entire operating system to be freely distributed, provided guidelines were followed relating to how the source code for that software was made available going forward (see http:// www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).

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Based on UNIX-like systems — Clones of virtually all the other user-level components of a UNIX system had been created. Those and other utilities and applications were built to run on UNIX or other UNIX-like systems.

Linux has become one of the most popular culminations of the open source software movement. But the traditions of sharing code and building communities that made Linux possible started years before Linux was born. You could argue that it began in a comfortable think tank known as Bell Laboratories. Read Appendix B to learn more about the history of Linux. Leveraging work done on UNIX and GNU projects helped to get Linux up and running quickly. The culture of sharing in the open source community and adoption of a wide array of tools for communicating on the Internet have helped Linux move quickly through infancy and adolescence to become a mature operating system. The simple commitment to share code is probably the single most powerful contributor to the growth of the open source software movement in general, and Linux in particular. That commitment has also encouraged involvement from the kind of people who are willing to contribute back to that community in all kinds of ways. The willingness of Linus Torvalds to incorporate code from others in the Linux kernel has also been critical to the success of Linux.

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What’s So Great About Linux? If you have not used Linux before, you should expect a few things to be different from using other operating systems. Here is a brief list of some Linux features that you might find cool: ■

No constant rebooting — Uptime is valued as a matter of pride (remember, Linux and other UNIX systems are most often used as servers, which are expected to, and do, stay up 24/7/365). After the original installation, you can install or remove most software without having to reboot your computer.

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Start/stop services without interrupting others — You can start and stop individual services (such as Web, file, and e-mail services) without rebooting or even interrupting the work of any other users or features of the computer. In other words, you should not have to reboot your computer every time someone sneezes. (Installing a new kernel is just about the only reason you need to reboot.)

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Portable software — You can usually change to another Linux, UNIX, or BSD system and still use the exact same software! Most open source software projects were created to run on any UNIX-like system and many also run on Windows systems, if you need them to. If it won’t run where you want it to, chances are that you, or someone you hire, can port it to the computer you want. (Porting refers to modifying an application or driver so it works in a different computer architecture or operating system.)

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Downloadable applications — If the applications you want are not delivered with your version of Linux, you can often download and install them with a single command, using tools such as apt, urpmi, and yum.

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No settings hidden in code or registries — Once you learn your way around Linux, you’ll find that (given the right permissions on your computer) most configuration is done in plain text files that are easy to find and change. In recent years, simplified graphical interfaces have been added to make it even easier to work with configuration files. Because Linux is based on openness, nothing is hidden from you. Even the source code, for GPLcovered software, is available for your review.

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Mature desktop — The X Window System (providing the framework for your Linux desktop) has been around longer than Microsoft Windows. The KDE and GNOME desktop environments provide graphical interfaces (windows, menus, icons, and so forth) that rival those on Microsoft systems. You have the freedom to choose lightweight window managers instead as well. Ease-of-use problems with Linux systems are rapidly evaporating.

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Freedom — Linux, in its most basic form, has no corporate agenda or bottom line to meet. You are free to choose the Linux distribution that suits you, look at the code that runs the system, add and remove any software you like, and make your computer do what you want it to do. Linux runs on everything from supercomputers to cell phones and everything in between. Many countries are rediscovering their freedom of choice and making the switch at government and educational levels. France, Germany, Korea, and India are just a few that have taken notice of Linux. The list continues to grow.

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There are some aspects of Linux that make it hard for some new users to get started. One is that Linux is typically set up to be secure by default, so you need to adjust to using an administrative login (root) to make most changes that affect the whole computer system. Although this can be a bit inconvenient, trust me, it makes your computer safer than just letting anyone do anything. This model was built around a true multi-user system. You can set up logins for everyone who uses your Linux computer, and you (and others) can customize your environment however you see fit without affecting anyone else’s settings. For the same reason, many services are off by default, so you need to turn them on and do at least minimal configuration to get them going. For someone who is used to Windows, Linux can be difficult just because it is different from Windows. But because you’re reading this book, I assume you want to learn about those differences.

Summary Getting started with Linux can be as easy as inserting the CD or DVD accompanying this book into your PC and rebooting. Using that media, you can try out 18 different Linux systems, either live or by installing them to your hard disk. Linux can be used as a desktop system (like Microsoft Windows); as a Web, file, or print server; or as a programmer’s workstation. You have a lot of flexibility when it comes to how Linux is configured and what software you install and run on it. Because you are free to use open source software as you please—many Linux enthusiasts have come up with interesting and innovative ways to use Linux and benefit from it. Chapter 2 describes what you can do with Linux, what you can make with Linux, and what you can become with Linux.

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he primary objective of this book is to lead you through the most popular ways of using Linux as a desktop, server, or programmer’s workstation. Once you become comfortable using Linux, however, you’ll begin to see that these uses are just the tip of the iceberg.

IN THIS CHAPTER What you can do with Linux What you can make with Linux

Remember that you can modify, rebuild, and reuse free and open source software as you please. This means that you can piece together the projects you like to build the Linux system you want. You could even modify it to run on different types of hardware. To those ends, you can join together with others of like mind to produce software that might be too ambitious to build by yourself.

How you can become involved with Linux

So, before we head full-speed into the how-to portions of the book, this chapter sets out to spark your imagination and open your eyes to: ■

What you can make with Linux — With free software and a spare PC you can make stand-alone gadgets, such as a music jukebox, game console, telephone answering machine, or home network server. NASA straps Linux on its moon rovers to guide their movements. Some schools use the Linux Terminal Server Project to drive hundreds of old or cheap PCs from a single server. What sort of projects can you come up with?

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How you can get involved with Linux — For many Linux enthusiasts, Linux is more than just their computer system. It is what they believe in. It is what they fight for. It is what consumes them.

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If Linux stirs you up, there are many ways to contribute to open source software projects and advocate the use of free software. ■

What you can become with Linux — Just because Linux is “free,” it doesn’t mean that you can’t make any money from it. There are small businesses that use Linux for all their office and Web software needs. Linux enterprise software is used to drive thousands of workstations and servers in many major corporations. If you are interested in using Linux as a profession, you can get training and certification to become a skilled participant in the open source revolution.

Making Things with Linux To start thinking about the kinds of things you can make or do with Linux, all you have to do is look around you. Linux may already be in your handheld device, in your personal video recorder, and (almost certainly) running your search engine or favorite Web site. Many people, schools, and companies have adapted Linux in all kinds of fun, educational, and profitable ways. Some have stripped Linux down to its bare essentials (an embedded Linux kernel, a shell, and a few drivers) and added their own software to use Linux in communications devices and robots. Others have put together their own set of software to accomplish a specific goal, such as a kid-safe computer or a portable Web server. This section describes some fun and interesting ways that people have adapted Linux to suit their needs.

Linux in Outer Space When NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) named Spirit and Opportunity are tooling around Mars and sending back images and data, Linux is driving the rovers in everything from high-level planning to low-level simulation and visualization. NASA chose Linux because of its graphics and processor speed, as well its stability and the myriad of software tools available for it. NASA developed the Roving Sequencing and Visualization Program (RSVP) application suite in Linux to command the MERs, and then tested and deployed that system on Linux as well. In that suite, the Rover Sequence Editor (RoSE) lets NASA send spacecraft commands to the MER, and HyperDrive offers three-dimensional graphics for controlling it (such as moving the arms, driving the vehicles, and controlling imaging). Figure 2-1 shows a computer-generated image produced by NASA of how a MER appears on Mars. The Linux system running on each MER is an embedded Linux real-time operating system from TimeSys (www.timesys.com). The RoSE application (for passing messages) was written in Java, and HyperDrive elements (image viewer and sequence flow browser) are written in C++ and C languages. An article in the Linux Journal by NASA scientists Frank Hartman and Scott Maxwell describes in depth how Linux was used on the MER project (www.linuxjournal.com/ article/7570).

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FIGURE 2-1 Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) gather data, send images, and move around Mars from onboard Linux systems.

(Photo by NASA)

Spirit landed on Mars on January 4, 2004, and Opportunity landed on January 25. Both were still in operation after more than four years, at the time of this writing. If you are interested in following the progress of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, refer to the project’s Web site at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov).

Linux in Gadgets Lots of commercial communications, entertainment, and other kinds of gadgets have Linux running on the inside. Linux is an excellent operating system for these specialty devices, not only because of its cost, but also because of its stability and adaptability. Linux enthusiasts love these devices, referred to as embedded Linux systems, because they can often adapt, add, or run different Linux software on these devices (whether the manufacturer intended that or not). More and more, however, manufacturers are embracing the Linux enthusiast and hardware hacker and selling open devices for them to use. Here are some examples: ■

Mobile phones — OpenMoko (www.openmoko.com) produces mass-market mobile phones, such as the Neo FreeRunner, that are based on Linux. Like the software, the FreeRunner’s hardware also follows an open design. Although the phone is intended for general consumer use, the phone’s software is currently most appropriate for people who want to develop their own software for the phones. Figure 2-2 shows an example of the Neo FreeRunner. Motorola, OpenMoko, and Tranzda Technologies each offer multiple Linux-based mobile phones. Phone models running Linux on the inside include the Motorola Rokr EM30 (emphasizing music playing), Tranzda Technologies NewPlus phones (with WiFi, GPS, and a camera), Purple Labs Purple Magic phones (sub-$100 phone), and Grunig B700 (with keyboard and e-mail support).

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FIGURE 2-2 Modify software to use the Linux Neo FreeRunner as a phone, GPS device, clock, game player, and media player.

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Sony PlayStation — Not only can you install and run Linux on PlayStation, but Sony encourages you to do it. In 2002, Sony released Linux Kit for PlayStation 2. Included in that kit is a derivative of the Japanese Kondara MNU/Linux (which is based on Red Hat Linux). For PlayStation 3, several Linux distributions have been modified (ported) to run on that hardware, including Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, and a commercial Yellow Dog Linux product for PlayStation 3. (See Chapter 22 for a description of Yellow Dog Linux.)

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Personal video recorders (PVRs) — If you have a TiVo PVR or a set-top for streaming video from Netflix, you are already running Linux in your home. The Netflix PVR is from Roku, Inc. (www.roku.com), which produces a range of Linux-based media players. TiVo has produced Linux-based PVRs for years. The availability of the TiVo Linux source code (www.tivo.com/linux) has made TiVo one of the most popular devices for Linux enthusiasts to hack.

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Netbooks — Shrinking laptops with shrinking prices have led to Netbooks. These mini laptop computers have proven to be excellent devices for running Linux. With low-powered processors and small screens, Netbooks provide a good partnership with Linux systems that are tuned for these compact, efficient devices. The Asus Eee PC is one of the most popular Netbooks available today. Many Asus Eee PCs have been sold with Xandros Linux pre-installed. However, industrious Linux enthusiasts have created ports of Fedora, Ubuntu, and other Linux distributions to run on the Eee PC. Figure 2-3 shows an Eee PC with Fedora Linux running on it.

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Personal handheld devices — A whole range of personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable navigation devices (PNAs), and portable media players (PMPs) are available today with Linux inside. The Garmin Nuvi (models 860, 880, and 5000) GPS navigation devices fea-

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ture GNOME Mobile Linux and GeoClue location technology. The Samsung i70 combines a digital camera with a personal media player built on MontaVista Linux. Inside the Sony mylo Internet Device is the Qtopia Linux system, which lets you connect to WiFi networks, play Adobe Flash video and games, and even record video. A good place to learn about these and other devices that run Linux is the LinuxDevices site (www.linuxdevices.com).

FIGURE 2-3 An Asus Eee PC can run specially tuned Fedora or other Linux systems.

Linux in Projects Whole open source projects have been devoted to special-use Linux systems. These projects may be focused on doing one type of activity very well (like building a multimedia center) or solving a problem (like dwindling school computer budgets). Here are some examples of ways people have brought together open source software that you might find interesting: ■

MythTV (www.mythtv.org) — When it comes to open source personal video recorder projects, MythTV leads the way. Like most PVRs, MythTV lets you gather TV channel listings for your area, select shows you want to view or record, and play back recorded shows when you are ready. Beyond that, MythTV lets you pause, fast forward, and rewind live TV, skip commercials, and choose from different types of video compression.

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By integrating other open source software into the MythTV interface, you can do a lot of things you wouldn’t expect to do with a PVR. You can rip and play MP3, FLAC, Ogg, and CD audio files and group them into playlists. You can use MAME and other gaming console applications to play games. MythTV also includes an image viewer, weather module, and RSS newsfeeder. Mythbuntu (www.mythbuntu.org) and MythDora (www.mythdora.com) projects are available to configure MythTV on a particular Linux distribution. KnoppMyth (www.knoppmyth.net) provides an easy-to-install Knoppix-based MythTV version. Figure 2-4 shows an example of the main MythTV screen.

FIGURE 2-4 Manage your TV viewing, recording, and playback with MythTV.

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Linux Terminal Server Project (www.ltsp.org) — Using a central server and possibly hundreds of low-end PCs or thin clients, you can create a cost-effective way to fill a school or small business with Linux workstations. Client computers don’t need much power because they essentially just run the display, keyboard, and mouse. The server actually stores data, runs applications, and provides access to network devices and other hardware. (The K12 LTSP project is described later in this chapter.)

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Asterisk Telephony Project (www.asterisk.org) — Asterisk is an open source telephony project that includes a PBX telephony engine and related applications and tools. With Asterisk, you can create an IP or hybrid PBX that can communicate to callers over the Internet (or other IP networks), analog telephone service, or digital T1 lines. A huge range of features lets you set up call centers, create conference bridges, and manage voicemail.

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Linux Toys and Make (www.linuxtoys.net and http://makezine.com) — If you like to tinker, there are places you can go to find instructions for putting together your own free software and random hardware projects. The books Linux Toys and Linux Toys II (Wiley Publishing) contain instructions to build your own gaming console, weather monitor, home network server, and so on from free software and an old PC. Make Magazine and its Web site describe many projects that include open source software, such as building a supercomputer from dozens of old PCs and ParallelKnoppix or turning an old PC into an Internet-enabled DVD burner, CD player, or MP3 Jukebox that’s based on KNOPPIX.

2

As you can see, a lot of people have already gone to the trouble to put together fun and interesting projects that you can replicate. And, of course, you can always be creative and come up with your own projects, while drawing on the massive amounts of open source software.

Getting Involved with Linux Using and playing with Linux is great fun. Connecting up with others who share your joy in Linux can make the whole Linux experience that much better. So if you want to go beyond just using Linux and become someone who improves it and spreads the word, here are some things you can do: ■

Join a Linux User Group (LUG) or Linux community

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Contribute to an open source project

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Ask or answer questions at online Linux forums

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Connect to a Linux IRC chat room

Activity in the Linux and the open source communities has grown so dramatically in recent years that many diverse outlets exist for learning and getting to know other Linux enthusiasts. Likewise, if you find that Linux is something you enjoy and want to help to flourish in the future, there are a variety of ways in which you can become a Linux advocate.

Joining a Linux User Group Linux User Groups (LUGs) have sprung up all over the world. Many LUGs sponsor Linux installfests (where members help you install the Linux of your choice on your computer) or help non-profit

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groups and schools use Linux on older computers that will no longer support the latest Microsoft Windows software. Here are some places to help you track down a local LUG: ■

Google (www.google.com/linux) — I found both of the LUGs I’ve been associated with by using Google to search for the word “Linux” and the city closest to where I was living.

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Linux Meetup Groups (linux.meetup.com) — Enter your ZIP code to search for the nearest LUG in your area.

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Linux Online (www.linux.org/groups) — Offers a large, international list of Linux User Groups. Select your country to see a list of available groups.

If there is no Linux User Group in your area, you might consider starting one. To get information on what LUGs are all about and some suggestions about starting one, refer to the Linux User Group HOWTO (www.tldp.org/HOWTO/User-Group-HOWTO.html).

Joining Linux Communities Communities of professionals and enthusiasts have grown around Linux and its related open source projects. Many have shown themselves willing to devote their time, knowledge, and skills on public mailing lists, forums, wikis, and other Internet venues (provided you ask politely and aren’t too annoying). Free online forums have sprung up to get information on specific Linux topics. Popular general Linux forums are available from www.LinuxQuestions.org, www.LinuxForums.org, and www.LinuxHelp.net. Most major Linux distributions have associated mailing lists and forums. You can go directly to the Web sites for the Red Hat–sponsored Fedora Linux (http://fedoraproject.org/), Debian (www.debian.com), Ubuntu (http://ubuntuforums.org), Gentoo (www.gentoo.org), and others to learn how to participate in forums and contribute to those projects.

Companies and Groups Supporting Linux Some companies and organizations make important contributions to Linux and open source software. Here are some of the most prominent ones: ■

SourceForge (web.sourceforge.com) — This organization maintains the open source development site Freshmeat (freshmeat.net) as well as SourceForge (www.sourceforge.net). It also maintains information technology sites, such as Slashdot (slashdot .org), NewsForge (www.newsforge.com), and Linux.com (www.linux.com).

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IBM (www.ibm.com/linux) — Because IBM has taken on the lion’s share of lawsuits against Linux and done a lot to further Linux, especially in the enterprise area, it deserves a mention here. There are many good resources for Linux at IBM’s Web site, including some excellent white papers covering Linux in business.

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Ibiblio (www.ibiblio.org) — Contains a massive archive of Linux software and documentation (www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux).

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Software Freedom Law Center (www.softwarefreedom.org) — This organization provides legal representation for most of the major free and open source software (FOSS) projects in existence today. It is the organization that defends the proper use of software covered under the GNU public license.

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One Laptop Per Child Project (www.laptop.org) — The OLPC project is an organization that is dedicated to helping educate disadvantaged children all over the world by putting laptop computers in their hands. As of this writing, more than 300,000 OLPC XO laptop computers have been shipped worldwide, making it the single largest distributor of Fedora Linux systems.

2

Keeping Up with Linux While Slashdot.org is probably the news site that most Linux enthusiasts keep track of and participate in, there are many other places to look for Linux and open source news as well. ■

Slashdot (slashdot.org) — Probably the top news site for open source devotees. People submit links to news articles, book reviews, and interviews related to technology, science, politics, or other “news for nerds.” Then everyone piles on with their own commentaries. Having your book or project “slashdotted” means you have made the big time — although you are as likely to get crushed as you are to get praised.

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Digg (http://digg.com/linux_unix) — Some say that Digg.com has become more popular than Slashdot for providing articles relating to Linux. You can vote on which articles are most interesting to you to gain more exposure for an article.

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Groklaw (www.groklaw.net) — The place to look for information regarding legal issues surrounding open source software.

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Linux Today (www.linuxtoday.com) — This site gathers news that is of particular interest to software developers and IT managers.

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LWN.net (www.lwn.net) — Produces a weekly newsletter covering a range of Linux topics.

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Newsforge (www.newsforge.com) — Bills itself as the “Online Newspaper for Linux and Open Source.” The site contains many original articles, as well as links to up-to-the-minute open source stories from other locations on the Web.

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LinuxInsider (www.linuxinsider.com) — Covers news articles related to Linux issues around the world.

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Linux at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux) — Contains an excellent write-up of what Linux is, and includes other Wikipedia links to related topics, companies, and issues. This site also provides a good understanding of Linux history and relationships.

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■

Linux.com (www.linux.com) — Provides Linux information, news, tips, articles, and reference material.

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CertCities.com (http://certcities.com/certs/linux_unix/columns/) — This site also regularly publishes articles on Linux and UNIX.

If you need help or have questions about Linux, here are a few sites to try: ■

Linux Questions (www.linuxquestions.org) — In addition to offering forums on different Linux distributions, this is a great place to ask questions related to hardware compatibility, security, and networking. The site also has some good tutorials, as well as reviews of books and Linux distributions.

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Google Linux (www.google.com/linux) — Search for Linux-specific information from this part of the Google search site.

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Linux Forums (www.linuxforums.org) — Contains active forums on your favorite distributions and has active IRC channels as well.

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The Linux Documentation Project (www.tldp.org) — Offers a wide range of HOWTOs, guides, FAQs, man pages, and other documentation related to Linux.

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Linux Help (www.linuxhelp.net) — Offers forums, news, and current information about the Linux kernel. This site also contains information about finding Linux mailing lists, newsgroups, and user groups.

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Linux Online (www.linux.org) — Provides a central source of information related to Linux distributions, documentation, books, and people.

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Linux Kernel Archives (www.kernel.org) — The primary site for Linux kernel development. You can get the latest stable or testing versions of the Linux kernel. Not the first place to start with Linux, but I thought you’d want to know it’s there.

Major Linux Projects As you may know, the name Linux comes from the Linux kernel created by Linus Torvalds. The desktop, application, server, and other software needed to create a full Linux system are added from other open source projects. The following is a list of some of the major open source software organizations that usually have software included with Linux: ■

Free Software Foundation (www.fsf.org) — Supports the GNU Project, which produces much of the software outside the kernel that is associated with Linux. In particular, open source versions of nearly every early UNIX command have been implemented by the GNU Project.

■

Apache Software Foundation (www.apache.org) — Produces the Apache (HTTP) Web server. It also manages related projects, such as SpamAssassin (spam filtering software) and a variety of modules for serving special Web content (perl, SSL, PHP, and so on).

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■

K Desktop Environment (www.kde.org) — Develops KDE, one of the two leading desktop environments used with Linux.

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GNOME (www.gnome.org) — Develops the other leading Linux desktop environment (used as the default desktop for Red Hat Linux systems).

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X.Org (www.x.org) and XFree86 (www.xfree86.org) — These two organizations provide different implementations of the X Window System graphical desktop framework software.

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Internet Systems Consortium (www.isc.org) — Develops several major open source software projects related to the Internet. These include Bind (domain name system server), INN (InterNetNews news server), and DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol).

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The Mozilla project (www.mozilla.org) — The first major Web browser product was Mozilla Navigator, which was originally based on code released to the open source community from Netscape Communicator. Other open source browsers incorporate Mozilla’s engine. The Mozilla project also offered a suite of related Internet clients that included e-mail, composer, IRC Chat, and address book software. New software development from the Mozilla project focuses on the Thunderbird e-mail and news client and Firefox Web browser, which have seen enormous success on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X platforms in the past few years. The old Mozilla suite is offered today under the name SeaMonkey (www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey).

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The Samba Project (www.samba.org) — This site provides software for sharing files and printers using CIFS and SMB clients. These protocols are the most common means of sharing files and printers with Microsoft Windows operating systems.

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The Sendmail Consortium (www.sendmail.org) — This site maintains the sendmail mail transport agent, which is the world’s most popular software for transporting mail across the Internet.

2

There are, of course, many more open source projects and organizations that provide software included in various Linux distributions, but the ones discussed here will give you a good feel for the kind of organizations that produce open source software.

Exploring Linux Distributions Despite the fact that there are hundreds of Linux distributions, you can safely focus on a handful of Linux systems to get a good flavor of what is available. That’s because most Linux distributions are derived from a few major ones. For example, Ubuntu, KNOPPIX, Damn Small Linux (DSL), and other Linux systems are based on Debian GNU/Linux. CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and others are based on Fedora.

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Refer to Chapters 17 through 28 for descriptions of most of the major Linux distributions available today, along with procedures for getting and installing them. If you haven’t chosen a distribution yet, here are some sites that can help you evaluate, find, and get a Linux distribution that interests you: ■

Distrowatch (distrowatch.com) — Contains information about a few hundred different Linux distributions. The site provides an easy way to find out about different distributions, and then simply connect to the distribution’s home page, download site, or related forums.

■

LWN.net Linux Distributions (lwn.net/Distributions) — For succinct descriptions of more than 400 Linux distributions on one page, this is the place to go.

Here are key sites associated with Linux distributions covered in this book: ■

Fedora (http://fedoraproject.org) — Community-driven Linux, supported by Red Hat. Look to Livna.org (rpm.livna.org) for downloads of add-on software for Fedora. FedoraForum.org is a popular Forum site for Fedora.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (www.redhat.com) — Check the main Red Hat Web site for information on commercial Linux products.

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Debian GNU/Linux (www.debian.org) — Get news, documentation, support, and download information about Debian. Try the Debian news site (www.us.debian.org/ News/) for the latest news articles on Debian.

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Ubuntu Linux (www.ubuntu.com) — Learn about the Ubuntu Linux distribution, community, and related products from this official Ubuntu site. From the Ubuntu Wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com), find links to documentation, HOWTOs, community sites, events, and releases.

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SUSE (www.novell.com/linux/) — Get product and support information from this project’s site. The Novell site also provides information about Novell’s own Linux offerings and details of its recent alliance with Microsoft.

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openSUSE (www.opensuse.org) — Get information and downloads, connect to mailing lists and forums, and participate in the community-supported version of SUSE.

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KNOPPIX (www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html) — The official KNOPPIX page on its creator’s (Klaus Knopper’s) Web site. An active KNOPPIX forum is available from www.knoppix.net/forum/.

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Yellow Dog (www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl) — From this site, sponsored by Terra Soft Solutions, you can purchase Yellow Dog Linux on CDs or get it preinstalled on Mac hardware. The YDL.net site offers some extra services for Yellow Dog Linux users, such as personal e-mail accounts and Web space.

■

Gentoo (www.gentoo.org) — The center for the very active Gentoo community. The site contains a wealth of information about Gentoo and plenty of forums and IRC channels in which to participate. You’ll find a solid and growing documentation set to back up the distribution and tons of software packages to try (in the thousands).

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Slackware (www.slackware.org) — Check the changelogs at this site to get a feel for the latest Slackware developments. Try LinuxPackages (www.linuxpackages.net) for a broader range of information about Slackware.

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Freespire (www.freespire.org) — Contains information about what was once the community-supported arm of the Linspire Linux system. With the Xandros purchase of Linspire, Freespire now is under the control of Xandros.

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Mandriva (www.mandrivalinux.com) — Formed from the merger of Mandrake Linux and Connectiva Linux, the Mandriva Linux Web site gives visitors a variety of Linux products, services, and support.

2

Linux in the Real World To see how Linux and related free and open source software is being used today in the real world, I’ve provided some short examples that relate to Linux use in schools, small business, and enterprise venues.

Linux in Schools Cost savings, flexibility, and a huge pool of applications have made Linux a wonderful alternative to proprietary systems for many schools. One project has been particularly successful in schools: the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project (www.k12ltsp.org). K12LTSP is based on the Linux Terminal Service Project (www.ltsp.org) and Fedora (www .fedoraproject.org), but is tuned to work particularly in schools. With K12LTSP, you centralize all your school’s applications on one or more server machines. Then you can use low-end PCs (old Pentiums or thin clients) as workstations. With thin clients starting under $200 or old PCs already hanging around your school, you can service a whole class or even a whole school for little more than the cost of the servers and some networking hardware. Figure 2-5 illustrates the general steps you would go through to configure a Linux LTSP sever to manage multiple workstations. By centralizing all the school’s software on a limited number of servers, K12LTSP can offer both security (only a few servers to watch over) and convenience (no need to reinstall hundreds of Windows machines to upgrade or enhance the software). Each client machine controls the display, mouse, and keyboard, while all of the user’s applications and files are stored on and run from the server. Many schools in Oregon have adopted K12LTSP, including those attended by Linus Torvalds’s children in Portland, Oregon. Adoption of K12LTSP has also begun in Atlanta, Georgia and many other cities across the United States.

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FIGURE 2-5 Configure LTSP on the server, and then boot up workstations to work from that server. Workstation

Linux server

Install LTSP server and client software

1

Prepare workstation configuration

2

Start services: DHCP, TFTP, NFS, Portmapper, XDMCP

3

Workstation

Workstation

4 LAN switch

Boot workstations

Linux in Small Business Often a small business can consolidate the Web services it needs into one or two Linux servers. It can meet its basic office computing needs with mature open source applications such as OpenOffice. org, GIMP, and a Firefox browser. But can a small business run entirely on open source software alone? When Jim Nanney started his Coast Grocery business, where residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast can order groceries online for delivery, he set out to do just that. In part, he just wanted to see if he could rely solely on open source software. But he also figured that cost savings of at least $10,000 by not buying commercial software could help make his small business profitable a lot faster. To allow customers to order groceries online, Jim selected the open source e-commerce software called osCommerce (www.oscommerce.com). The osCommerce software is built with the PHP Web scripting language and uses a MySQL database. Jim runs the software from a Linux system with an Apache Web server. On the office side of the business, Jim relies entirely on Fedora Linux systems. He uses OpenOffice.org Writer for documents, GIMP, and Inkscape for logos and other artwork, and GnuCash for accounting. For Web browsing, Firefox is used. So far, Jim hasn’t had a need to purchase any commercial software.

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2

Here are some of the advantages that Jim has derived from his all–open source business: ■

Community support — The communities surrounding osCommerce and Fedora have been very helpful. With active forums and 24-hour IRC channels, it has been easier to get help with those projects than with any proprietary software. Also unlike proprietary software, participants are generally quite knowledgeable and often include the developers of the software themselves.

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Long-term security — Jim disputes conventional wisdom that betting your business on proprietary software is safer than relying on open source. If a software company goes out of business, the small business could go down, too. But with open source, you have the code, so you could always pay someone to update the code when necessary or fix it yourself.

■

Easier improvements — By doing some of his own PHP programming, Jim had a lot of flexibility related to adding features. In some cases, he could take existing code and modify it to suit his needs. In the case of creating a special shopping list feature, he found it easiest to write code from scratch. In the process of using the software, when he found exploitable bugs, he submitted the code fixes back to the project.

■

No compatibility problems — On those occasions where he needed to provide information to others, compatibility has not been a problem. When he makes business cards, door hangers, or other printed material, he saves his artwork to PDF or SVG formats to send to a commercial printer. Regular documents can be exported to Word, Excel, or other common formats.

For businesses starting on a shoestring, in many cases open source software can offer both the cost savings and flexibility needed to help the business survive during the difficult start-up period. Later, it can help those same businesses thrive, because open source solutions can often be easily scaled up as the business grows.

Linux in the Enterprise Building a company’s computer infrastructure on open source software represents a huge amount of confidence that it will provide the level of reliability, security, and features that a company needs. That’s why most large companies converting to open source infrastructures have gone with products from enterprise Linux providers, such as Red Hat, Inc. (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and Novell, Inc. (SUSE Linux Enterprise). Built into Red Hat’s open source enterprise products are features such as Red Hat Directory Server, Global File System (GFS), and Cluster Suite. Directory Server can scale up to handle millions of identities, representing settings for applications’ user profiles, access control, and policies across thousands of machines and users. Using GFS and Cluster Suite, an enterprise can treat its entire storage infrastructure as a common pool, to minimize data duplication and simplify back-ups, system recovery, and adding storage and servers. Companies moving their infrastructures to Linux include Apoteket (Sweden’s government-run pharmacy), which is moving more than 900 pharmacies to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) on Intel

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servers. Governments that are migrating to RHEL include cities such as Chicago and Bloomington, Illinois. You can read about other organizations migrating to RHEL on Red Hat’s Success Stories page (www.redhat.com/solutions/info/casestudies).

Becoming a Linux Professional Pursuing a career based on something that people give away for free may not seem like a brilliant idea. But the truth is that there are thousands of jobs for Linux professionals if you have the skills to get the job done. Contributing to open source projects has long been one of the best ways to learn the skills you need to gain entry to a Linux career. When the Ubuntu project started up, it hired many of the best contributors to the Debian GNU/Linux project. When Red Hat, Inc. needs to hire a Linux professional, it often looks to the ranks of Fedora contributors. Formal Linux training and certification opportunities have grown considerably in the past few years. If you want to work for companies that rely on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you can get training and certification directly from Red Hat, Inc. Red Hat offers classes in everything from Red Hat Linux Essentials to Red Hat Enterprise Deployment, Virtualization, and Systems Management. You can train for certifications such as: ■

Red Hat Certified Technician (RHCT) — Those who have never used Linux or other UNIX-like systems can transition their skills to Linux with an RHCT certification.

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Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) — Linux professionals who are more advanced in the area of systems administration usually take the RHCE certification.

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Red Hat Certified Datacenter Specialist (RHCDS) — The RHCDS certification demonstrates skills to build mission-critical data center environments. Emphasis is put on using Red Hat technologies to create data centers that are scalable, reliable, available, and manageable.

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Red Hat Certified Security Specialist (RHCSS) — Skills emphasized in the RHCSS program focus on SELinux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Red Hat Directory Server.

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Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) — This credential is for technical professionals who need to develop skills in deploying large-scale enterprise environments.

Although Red Hat offers one of the most popular programs for Linux certifications, it is by no means the only place to get Linux certification. Sun Microsystems offers training for Linux system administrators (www.sun.com/training/). CompTIA offers Linux+ certification that is not tied to a particular Linux distribution. Likewise, Novell and Linux Professional Institute both offer Linux certifications. Ubuntu offers Ubuntu Certified Professional training and certification (www.ubuntu .com/training/certificationcourses).

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2

Summary Although most people use Linux as a desktop, server, or programmer’s workstation, many have also found that the freedom that open source software provides can be used in many creative ways. This chapter describes ways that projects ranging from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers to the MythTV personal video recorder have adapted Linux systems and software to meet their needs. If you get excited about the prospects of open source software as you read this book, you may find you want to pursue ways of getting more involved. Some ways of getting involved include joining a Linux User Group, contributing to open source projects, and participating in mailing lists or forums. As you increase your skills with open source software, you may find the idea of a career in Linux interesting. Many companies offer training and certification in Linux. This includes enterprise-oriented companies such as Red Hat and Novell, as well as specialized Linux training companies such as CompTIA and Linux Professional Institute.

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Running a Linux Desktop IN THIS PART Chapter 3 Getting into the Desktop Chapter 4 Playing Music and Video Chapter 5 Working with Words and Images Chapter 6 E-Mailing and Web Browsing Chapter 7 Gaming with Linux

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I

n the past few years, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) available for Linux have become as easy to use as those on the Apple Mac or Microsoft Windows systems. With these improvements, even a novice computer user can start using Linux without needing to have an expert standing by. You don’t need to understand the underlying framework of the X Window System, window managers, widgets, and whatnots to get going with a Linux desktop system. That’s why I start by explaining how to use the two most popular desktop environments: KDE (K desktop environment) and GNOME. After that, if you want to dig deeper, I tell you how you can put together your own desktop by discussing how to choose your own X-based window manager to run in Linux.

IN THIS CHAPTER Understanding your desktop Using the K desktop environment Using the GNOME desktop environment Configuring your own desktop Playing with desktop eye candy using AIGLX

Understanding Your Desktop When you install Linux distributions such as Fedora, SUSE, Mandriva, and Ubuntu, you have the option to choose a desktop environment. Distributions such as Gentoo and Debian GNU/Linux, give you the option to go out and get whatever desktop environment you want (without an installer particularly prompting you for it). When you are given the opportunity to select a desktop during installation, your choices usually include one or more of the following: ■

K desktop environment (www.kde.org) — In addition to all the features you would expect to find in a complete desktop environment (window managers, toolbars, panels, menus, keybindings, icons, and so on), KDE has many bells and whistles available. Applications for graphics, multimedia, office productivity, games,

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system administration, and many other uses have been integrated to work smoothly with KDE, which is the default desktop environment for SUSE, KNOPPIX, and various other Linux distributions. ■

GNOME desktop environment (www.gnome.org) — GNOME is a more streamlined desktop environment. It includes a smaller feature set than KDE and runs faster in many lower-memory systems. Some think of GNOME as a more business-oriented desktop. It’s the default desktop for Red Hat–sponsored systems such as Fedora and RHEL, as well as Ubuntu, and others.

The KDE 4 Desktop is based on the Qt 4 graphical toolkit. GNOME is based on GTK+ 2.8. Although graphical applications are usually written to either QT or GTK+, by installing both desktops you will have the libraries needed to run applications written for both toolkits from either environment.

NOTE

■

X and a window manager (X.org or XFree86.org + window manager) — You don’t need a full-blown desktop environment to operate Linux from a GUI. The most basic, reasonable way of using Linux is to simply start the X Window System server and a window manager of your choice (there are dozens to choose from). Many advanced users go this route because it can offer more flexibility in how they set up their desktops. Window managers such as Xfce and fluxbox are particularly good on low-end, low-resource machines.

The truth is that most X applications run in any of the desktop environments just described (provided that proper libraries are included with your Linux distribution as noted earlier). So you can choose a Linux desktop based on the performance, customization tools, and controls that best suit you. Each of these three types of desktop environments is described in this chapter.

Starting the Desktop Because the way that you start a desktop in Linux is completely configurable, different distributions offer different ways of starting up the desktop. Once your Linux distribution is installed, it may just boot to the desktop, offer a graphical login, or offer a text-based login. Bootable Linux systems (which don’t have to be installed at all) typically just boot to the desktop.

Boot to the Desktop Some bootable Linux systems boot right to a desktop without requiring you to log in so you can immediately start working with Linux. KNOPPIX is an example of a distribution that boots straight to a Linux desktop from a CD. That desktop system usually runs as a particular username (such as knoppix, in the case of the KNOPPIX distribution). To perform system administration, you have to switch to the administrator’s account temporarily (using the su or sudo command). Using any computer operating system without password protection violates all basic security rules. Use a system without password protection only on a temporary basis on computers that have no access to critical data. To be more secure, you can assign a password to a live CD’s primary user account, and certainly assign one if you install that live CD to hard disk.

CAUTION

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3

Boot to a Graphical Login Most desktop Linux systems that are installed on your hard disk boot up to a graphical login screen. Although the X display manager (xdm) is the basic display manager that comes with the X Window System, KDE and GNOME each have their own graphical display managers that are used as login screens (kdm and gdm, respectively). So chances are that you will see the login screen associated with KDE or GNOME (depending on which is the default on your Linux system). Display managers such as gdm offer you the opportunity to log in to different types of desktops, depending on what is installed on your system (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, or others). When Linux starts up, it enters into what is referred to as a run level or system state. Typically, a system set to start at run level 5 boots to a graphical login prompt. A system set to run level 3 boots to a text prompt. The run level is set by the initdefault line in the /etc/ inittab file. Change the number on the initdefault line as you please between 3 and 5. Don’t use any other number unless you know what you are doing. Never use 0 or 6; those numbers are used to shut down and reboot the system, respectively.

NOTE

Because graphical login screens are designed to be configurable, you often find that the distribution has its own logo or other graphical elements on the login screen. With Fedora Linux, the default login screen is based on the GNOME Display Manager (gdm). To begin a session, you can just enter your login (username) and password to start up your personal desktop environment. Your selected desktop environment — KDE, GNOME, Xfce, or other — comes up ready for you to use. Although the system defines a desktop environment by default, you can typically change desktop environments on those Linux systems, such as Fedora, that offer multiple desktop environments. Figure 3-1 shows a basic graphical login panel displayed by the gdm in Fedora.

FIGURE 3-1 A simple GNOME Display Manager (gdm) login screen

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To end a session, you can choose to log out. Figure 3-2 shows the graphical menu from a Fedora GNOME desktop for ending a session or changing the computer state (System ➪ Shut Down).

FIGURE 3-2 The Session menu in Fedora

X display managers can enable you to do a lot more than just get to your desktop. Although different graphical login screens offer different options, here are some you may encounter: ■

Session/Options — Look for a Session or Options button on the login screen. From there, you can choose to start your login session with a GNOME, KDE, or other desktop environment.

■

Language — Linux systems that are configured to start in multiple languages may give you the opportunity to choose a language (other than the default language) to boot into. For this to work, however, you must have installed support for the language you choose.

■

Accessibility — Some display managers let you choose accessibility preferences. These selections let you hear text read aloud, magnify parts of the screen, use an onscreen keyboard, or do other things to overcome difficulties hearing, seeing, or using a keyboard.

If you don’t like the way the graphical login screen looks, or you just want to assert greater control over how it works, there are many ways to configure and secure X graphical login screens. Later, after you are logged in, you can use the following tools (as root user) to configure the login screen: ■

KDE login manager — From the KDE Control Center, you can modify your KDE display manager using the Login Manager screen (from KDE Control Center, select System Administration ➪ Login Manager). You can change logos, backgrounds, color schemes, and other features related to the look-and-feel of the login screen.

■

GNOME login manager — The GNOME display manager (gdm) comes with a Login Window Preferences utility (from the desktop, run the gdmsetup command as root user). From the Login Window Preferences window, you can select the Local tab and choose a whole different theme for the login manager. On the Security tab, you may notice that all TCP connections to the X server are disallowed. Don’t change this selection because no processes other than those handled directly by your display manager should be allowed to connect to the login screen. (The gdmsetup utility was not available for Fedora 9, but it’s expected to be available for Fedora 10.)

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3

After your login and password have been accepted, the desktop environment configured for your user account starts up. Users can modify their desktop environments to suit their tastes (even to the point of changing the entire desktop environment used).

Boot to a Text Prompt Instead of a nice graphical screen with pictures and colors, you might see a login prompt that looks like this: Welcome to XYZ Linux yourcomputer login:

This is the way all UNIX and older Linux systems used to appear on the screen when they booted up. Now this is the login prompt that is typical for a system that is installed as a server or, for some reason, was configured not to start an X display manager for you to log in. Run level 3 boots to a plain-text login prompt in multiuser mode. Just because you have a text prompt doesn’t necessarily mean you can start a desktop environment. Many Linux experts boot to a text prompt because they want to bypass the graphical login screen or use the GUI only occasionally. Some Linux servers may not even have a desktop environment installed. However, if X and the other necessary desktop components are installed on your computer, you can typically start the desktop after you log in by typing the following command: $ startx

The default desktop environment starts up, and you should be ready to go. What you do next depends on whether you have a KDE, GNOME, or some sort of homespun desktop environment. In most cases, the GUI configuration you set up during installation for your video card and monitor gets you to a working desktop environment. If, for some reason, the screen is unusable when you start the desktop, you need to do some additional configuration. The “Configuring Your Own Desktop” section later in this chapter describes some tools you can use to get your desktop working.

NOTE

K Desktop Environment KDE was created to bring a high-quality desktop environment to UNIX (and now Linux) workstations. Integrated within KDE are tools for managing files, windows, multiple desktops, and applications. If you can work a mouse, you can learn to navigate the KDE desktop. The lack of an integrated, standardized desktop environment once held back Linux and other UNIX systems from acceptance on the desktop. While individual applications ran well, you mostly could not drag-and-drop files or other items between applications. Likewise, you couldn’t open a file and expect the machine to launch the correct application to deal with it or save your windows

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from one login session to the next. With KDE, you can do all those things and much more. For example, you can: ■

Drag-and-drop a document from one folder window to another (to move it) or on an OpenOffice.org Writer icon (to open it for editing).

■

Right-click an image file (JPEG, PNG, and so on), and the OpenWith menu lets you choose to open the file using an image viewer (KView), editor (GIMP), slide show viewer (KuickShow), or other application.

To make more applications available to you in the future, KDE provides a platform for developers to create programs that easily share information and detect how to deal with different data types. The things you can do with KDE increase in number every day. KDE is the default desktop environment for Mandriva, KNOPPIX, and several other Linux systems. SUSE, openSUSE, and related distributions moved from KDE to GNOME as the default desktop, but still make KDE available. Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora, which used to place less emphasis on KDE, now have much improved support for KDE desktops, even offering a custom KDE desktop live CD/installer disc. The past year has seen a major new KDE release: KDE 4. Although it is still somewhat unstable, KDE 4 offers some bold new features for managing your desktop. The following section describes how to get started with KDE.

Using the KDE Desktop The KDE 4 desktop, now available with Fedora, Ubuntu, and other major Linux distributions, offers the new Plasma desktop and new framework for developing KDE applications. Some Linux distributions still use the more stable KDE 3.5, so you may have a choice of which KDE you use. KDE 4 marks some major innovations for the KDE desktop. New libraries were added to support multimedia applications and improve handling of removable devices. There are new applications for viewing documents (such as Okular) and managing files (such as Dolphin). The most important new feature, however, is the Plasma desktop shell. The Plasma desktop shell gives the KDE 4 desktop a whole new look and feel. It features improved ways of finding and presenting information, such as KRunner and KickOff. The new Plasma panel can incorporate lots of new applets, as well as clocks, pagers, and other useful applications. Elements in the Plasma desktop shell are referred to as plasmoids. What makes plasmoids different from components on many of today’s desktop systems is that they can be combined in various ways to interact with each other and can be placed in different locations. For example, if a particular widget (such as a clock or a news ticker) is important to you, instead of having it represented by a tiny icon on the panel, you can put a big version of the applet on your desktop. Figure 3-3 shows an example of a KDE desktop in Fedora.

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FIGURE 3-3 The KDE desktop includes a panel, desktop icons, and much more.

Some of the key elements of the KDE desktop include: ■

Plasmoids — Applets that can be added to the desktop as well as the panel are referred to as plasmoids in KDE 4. Here you can see the clock, picture frame, and news ticker all added to the desktop. You can drag plasmoids around, group them together, and arrange them as you like on your desktop.

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Konqueror — The default Web browser for KDE, which can also be used as a file manager.

■

Dolphin — A new file manager for KDE.

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Panel — The panel provides some quick tools for launching applications and managing the desktop. You can adapt the panel to your needs by resizing it, adding tools, and changing its location. By default, you start with an application launcher, a taskbar, a desktop pager, some mini applets, a new device modifier, and a clock.

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Application Launcher/Menu — This panel button opens the new KickOff Application menu, which helps you search for applications installed on your system and launch them. Choose between Favorites (applications you use often), Applications (application menus), Computer (places and storage devices), or Recently Used applications. Right-click the button and select Switch to Classic Menu Style to return to a classic view of application categories and menus.

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Taskbar — This button shows the tasks that are currently running on the desktop. The button for the window that is currently active appears pressed in. Click a task to toggle between opening and minimizing the window.

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Desktop Pager — This box on the panel consists of your virtual desktops, which contain small views of each desktop. Four virtual desktops are available to you by default. These are labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4. You begin your KDE session on virtual desktop 1. If there are windows on the desktop, small icons representing them may cover the desktop number. You can change to any of the four desktops by clicking on its number in the Desktop Pager.

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Mini applets — Some applications, such as media players, clipboards, and battery power managers, will keep running after you have closed the related window. Some of those applications maintain a tiny applet in the panel. Often clicking these applets restores the windows they represent. This is convenient for music players if you don’t want to take up desktop space while you play music, but you want to be able to open the player quickly to change songs.

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Clock — The current time appears on the far-right side of the panel. Click it to see a calendar for the current month. Click the arrow keys on the calendar to move forward and back to other months.

To navigate the KDE desktop, you can use the mouse or key combinations. The responses from the desktop to your mouse depend on which button you click and where the mouse pointer is located. Table 3-1 describes the results of clicking each mouse button with the mouse pointer placed in different locations. (You can change these and other behaviors from the KDE menu by selecting System Settings, and then choosing Keyboard & Mouse.)

TABLE 3-1

Single-Click Mouse Actions Pointer Position

Mouse Button

Result

Window title bar or frame (current window active)

Left

Raises current window

Window title bar or frame (current window active)

Middle

Lowers current window

Window title bar or frame (current window active)

Right

Opens operations menu

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Pointer Position

Mouse Button

Result

Window title bar or frame (current window not active)

Left

Activates current window and raises it to the top

Window title bar or frame (current window not active)

Middle

Activates current window and lowers it

Window title bar or frame (current window not active)

Right

Opens operations menu without changing position

Inner window (current window not active)

Left

Activates current window, raises it to the top, and passes the click to the window

Inner window (current window not active)

Middle or Right

Activates current window and passes the click to the window

Any part of a window

Middle (plus hold Alt key)

Toggles between raising and lowering the window

Any part of a window

Right (plus hold Alt key)

Resizes the window

On the desktop area

Left (hold and drag)

Selects a group of icons

On the desktop area

Right

Opens system pop-up menu

3

Click a desktop icon to open it. Double-clicking a window title bar results in a window-shade action, where the window scrolls up and down into the title bar. If you don’t happen to have a mouse or you just like to keep your hands on the keyboard, there are several keystroke sequences you can use to navigate the desktop. Table 3-2 describes some examples.

TABLE 3-2

Keystrokes Key Combination

Result

Directions

Alt+Tab

Step through windows

To step through each of the windows that are running on the current desktop, hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key until you see the one you want. Then release the Alt key to select it.

Alt+F2

Open Run Command box

To open a box on the desktop that lets you type in a command and run it, hold the Alt key and press F2. Next, type the command in the box and press Enter to run it. You can also type a URL into this box to view a Web page. continued

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TABLE 3-2

(continued)

Key Combination

Result

Directions

Alt+F4

Close current window

To close the current window, press Alt+F4.

Ctrl+Alt+Esc

Close another window

To close an open window on the desktop, press Ctrl+Alt+Esc. When a skull and crossbones appear as the pointer, move the pointer over the window you want to close and click the left mouse button. (This is a good technique for killing a window that has no borders or menu.)

Ctrl+F1, F2, F3, or F4 key

Switch virtual desktops

Go directly to a particular virtual desktop by pressing and holding down the Ctrl key and pressing one of the following: F1, F2, F3, or F4. These actions take you directly to desktops one, two, three, and four, respectively. You could do this for up to eight desktops, if you have that many configured.

Alt+F3

Open window operation menu

To open the operations menu for the active window, press Alt+F3. When the menu appears, move the arrow keys to select an action (Move, Size, Minimize, Maximize, and so on), and then press Enter to select it. Press Esc to close the menu.

Managing Files with the Dolphin and Konqueror With KDE 4, the KDE desktop offers two file managers: the new Dolphin File Manager and the existing Konqueror browser/file manager. Dolphin is a streamlined file manager that is now used by default when you open a folder in KDE. Konqueror can handle a wide range of content from local files and folders to remote Web content. The two applications are described in the sections that follow.

NOTE

For further information on Dolphin, refer to the Dolphin File Manager home page (http://enzosworld.gmxhome.de).

Using the Dolphin File Manager By adding Dolphin to KDE, the KDE project now offers an efficient way to manage your files and folders, without the overhead of a full-blown Web browser (such as Konqueror). With Dolphin, you have a lot of flexibility and features for getting around your file system and working with the files and folders you encounter. Features in Dolphin include: ■

Navigation — The navigation bar lets you see the current folder in relation to your home directory or to the root of the file system. Select View ➪ Navigation Bar ➪ Show Full Location to see (and change) the full path to your current folder. Select folders from the left column to just go straight to that folder.

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■

Listing files and folders — Select icons in the toolbar to display files and folders as icons, with file name, size, and date, or with small icons in columns.

■

Properties — Right-click a file or folder and select Properties. Properties displayed include the file type (such as a folder or Ogg Vorbis audio), location (such as /home/joe), file/ folder size, date/time modified, date/time accessed, and permissions. For folders, there are also some nice features that let you refresh the amount of disk space used by the folder or configure file sharing to share the folder with other computers on the network. Both Samba and Network File System (NFS) file sharing are supported.

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Filter and search — Select Tools ➪ Show Filter Bar from the Dolphin toolbar. In the Filter box that appears, type a string of text to display any file or folder name containing that text string (for example, usi would match Music). Select Tools ➪ Find Files to open the kfind window to search for files (described later).

■

Preview — Typically, files are represented by generic icons (text file, image file, and so on) in the Dolphin window. Click the Preview button on the toolbar and you can see small representations of the text or image contained in the file, instead of a generic icon.

3

To open the Dolphin file manager, select File Manager from the main KDE menu. Figure 3-4 shows an example of the Dolphin file manager.

FIGURE 3-4 Dolphin is an efficient new file manager for KDE.

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Working with Files Because most of the ways of working with files in Dolphin are quite intuitive (by intention), Table 3-3 just provides a quick rundown of how to do basic file manipulation. TABLE 3-3

Working with Files in Dolphin Task

Action

Open a file

Left-click the file. The contents of that file will open in the application window defined for that content. For example, images open in Gwenview and text files open in KWrite. You also can open directories, applications, and links by left-clicking them.

Open a file with a specific application

Right-click a data file, choose Open With from the pop-up menu, and then select one of the available applications to open the file. The applications listed are those that are set up to open the file. Select Other to choose a different application.

Delete a file

Right-click the file and select Move to Trash. You are asked if you really want to move the file to the trash. Click Yes to delete the file.

Copy a file

Right-click the file and select Copy. This copies the file to your clipboard. After that, you can paste it to another folder. Click the Klipper (clipboard) icon in the panel to see a list of copied files. By default Klipper holds the seven most recently copied files. Click the Klipper icon and select Configure Klipper to change the number of copied files Klipper will remember.

Paste a file

Right-click on an open area of a folder and select Paste. The file that you copied previously is pasted in the current folder.

Link a file

Drag-and-drop a file from one folder to another. When the menu appears, click Link Here. (A linked file lets you access a file from a new location without having to make a copy of the original file. When you open the link, a pointer to the original file causes it to open.)

Move a file Copy a file Create a link to a file

With the original folder and target folder both open on the desktop, click and hold down the left mouse button on the file you want to move, drag the file to an open area of the new folder, and release the mouse button. From the menu that appears, click Move. (You can also use this menu to copy or create a link to the file.)

There are also several features for viewing information about the files and folders in your Dolphin windows: ■

View quick file information — Positioning the mouse pointer over the file displays information such as its filename, size, and type in the window footer.

■

View hidden files — Selecting View ➪ Show Hidden Files enables you to see files that begin with a dot (.). Dot files tend to be used for configuration and don’t generally need to be viewed in your daily work.

■

View file details — Selecting View ➪ View Mode ➪ Details provides a list of details regarding the contents of the current folder. You can click a folder in the details view to

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jump directly to that folder. Select View ➪ Additional Information to add more information about each file to the view, such as permissions, owner, group, and type. Columns and Icon views are also available. To act on a group of files at the same time, there are a couple of actions you can take. Choose Edit ➪ Select All to highlight all files and folders in the current folder so they are ready for you to act on. Or, you can select a group of files by clicking in an open area of the folder and dragging the pointer across the files you want to select. All files within the box will be highlighted. When files are highlighted, you can move, copy, or delete the files as described earlier.

Searching for Files If you are looking for a particular file or folder, use the Dolphin Find feature. To open a Find window to search for a file, open a local folder (such as /home/chris) and choose Tools ➪ Find File. The Find Files/Folders (kfind) window appears. You can also open this window by typing kfind from a Terminal window. Figure 3-5 shows the Find Files/Folders window.

FIGURE 3-5 Search for files and folders from the kfind window.

Simply type the name of the file you want to search for (in the Named text box) and the folder, including all subfolders, you want to search in (in the Look In text box). Then click the Find button. You can also use metacharacters with your search. For example, search for *.rpm to find all files that end in .rpm or z*.doc to find all files that begin with z and end with .doc. You can also select

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to have the search be case-sensitive or click the Help button to get more information on searching. The example in Figure 3-5 shows a search for Ogg music files (ending in .ogg). To further limit your search, you can click the Properties tab and then enter a date range (between), a number of months before today (during the previous x months), or the number of days before today (during the previous x days). You can also search for files that are of a certain size (File size is) in kilobytes, megabytes, or gigabytes. Select the Contents tab to limit the search to files of a particular type (File Type) or files that include text that you enter (Containing Text).

Creating New Files and Folders You can create a variety of file types when using the Dolphin window. Choose File ➪ Create New, and select Folder (to create a new folder) or one of several different types under the File or Device submenu. Depending on which version of Dolphin you are using, you might be able to create some or all of the file types that follow: ■

Text File — Opens a dialog box that lets you create a document in text format and place it in the Dolphin window. Type the name of the text document that you want to create and click OK.

■

HTML File — Opens a dialog box that lets you type the name of an HTML file to create.

■

Link to Location (URL) — Selecting this menu item opens a dialog box that lets you create a link to a Web address. Type a name to represent the address and type the name of the URL (Web address) for the site. (Be sure to add the http://, ftp://, or other prefix.)

■

Link to Application — Opens a window that lets you type the name of an application. Click the Permissions tab to set file permissions (Exec must be on if you want to run the file as an application). Click the Execute tab and type the name of the program to run (in the Execute on Click field) and a title to appear in the title bar of the application (in the Window Title field). If it is a text-based command, select the Run in Terminal check box. Select the Run as a Different User check box and add the username. Click the Application tab to assign the application to handle files of particular MIME types. Click OK.

Under the Link to Device submenu, you can make the following selections: ■

CD-ROM Device — Opens a dialog box that lets you type a new CD-ROM device name. Click the Device tab and type the device name (/dev/cdrom), the mount point (such as / mnt/cdrom), and the file system type (you can use iso9660 for the standard CD-ROM file system, ext2 for Linux, or msdos for DOS). When the device icon appears, you can open it to mount the CD-ROM and display its contents.

■

CDWRITER Device — From the window that opens, enter the device name of your CD writer.

■

Camera Device — In the dialog box that opens, identify the device name for the camera device that provides access to your digital camera.

■

DVD-ROM Device — Opens a dialog box that lets you type a new CD-ROM or DVD-ROM device name. Click the Device tab and type the device name (such as /dev/cdrom), the mount point (such as /mnt/cdrom), and the file system type (you can use iso9660 for the

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standard CD-ROM file system, ext2 for Linux, or msdos for DOS). When the device icon appears, you can open it to mount the CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and display its contents. ■

Floppy Device — Opens a dialog box in which you type a new floppy name. Click the Device tab and type the device name (/dev/fd0), the mount point (such as /mnt/ floppy), and the file system type (you can use auto to autodetect the contents, ext2 for Linux, or msdos for DOS). When the device icon appears, open it to mount the floppy and display its contents.

■

Hard Disc Device — Opens a dialog box that lets you type the name of a new hard disk or hard-disk partition. Click the Device tab and type the device name (/dev/hda1), the mount point (such as /mnt/win), and the file system type (you can use auto to autodetect the contents, ext2 or ext3 for Linux, or vfat for a Windows file system). When the device icon appears, you can open it to mount the file system and display its contents.

Creating MIME types and applications is described later in this chapter.

Using the Konqueror Web Browser/File Manager Although Dolphin is now intended for pure file manager features, Konqueror is an excellent tool if you want to move between local and Web content. Konqueror’s greatest strengths over earlier file managers include the following: ■

Network desktop — If your computer is connected to the Internet or a LAN, features built into Konqueror enable you to create links to files (using FTP) and Web pages (using HTTP) on the network and open them in the Konqueror window. Those links can appear as file icons in a Konqueror window or on the desktop. Konqueror also supports WebDAV, which can be configured to allow local read and write access to remote folders (which is a great tool if you are maintaining a Web server).

■

Web browser interface — The Konqueror interface works like Firefox, Internet Explorer, or other Web browsers in the way you select files, directories, and Web content. Because Konqueror is based on a browser model, a single click opens a file, a link to a network resource, or an application program. You can also open content by typing Web-style addresses in the Location box. The rendering engine used by Konqueror, called KHTML, is also used by Safari (the popular Web browser for Apple Mac OS X systems) and supports advanced features, such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 3.

Web pages that contain Java and JavaScript content run by default in Konqueror. To check that Java and JavaScript support is turned on, choose Settings ➪ Configure Konqueror. From the Settings window, click Java & JavaScript and select the Java tab. To enable Java, click the Enable Java Globally box and click Apply. Repeat for the JavaScript tab.

TIP

■

File types and MIME types — If you want a particular type of file to always be launched by a particular application, you can configure that file yourself. KDE already has dozens of MIME types defined so that particular file and data types can be automatically detected and opened in the correct application. There are MIME types defined for audio, image, text, video, and a variety of other content.

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Of course, you can also perform many standard file manager functions with Konqueror. For example, you can manipulate files by using features such as select, move, cut, paste, and delete; search directories for files; create new items (files, folders, and links, to name a few); view histories of the files and Web sites you have opened; and create bookmarks. Most of these features work the same way as they do in Dolphin (as described earlier).

Using Bookmarking Features in Konqueror Because Konqueror performs like a Web browser as well as a file manager, it includes several browser features. For example, the bookmarks feature enables you to keep a bookmark list of Web sites you have visited. Click Bookmarks, and a drop-down menu of the sites you have bookmarked appears. Select from that list to return to a site. There are several ways to add and change your bookmarks list: ■

Add Bookmark — To add the address of the page currently being displayed to your bookmark list, choose Bookmarks ➪ Add Bookmark. The next time you click Bookmarks, you will see the bookmark you just added on the Bookmarks menu. In addition to Web addresses, you can also bookmark any file or folder.

■

Edit Bookmarks — Select Bookmarks ➪ Edit Bookmarks to open a tree view of your bookmarks. From the Bookmark Editor window that appears, you can change the URLs, the icon, or other features of the bookmark. There is also a nice feature that lets you check the status of the bookmark (that is, the address available).

■

New Bookmark Folder — You can add a new folder of bookmarks to your Konqueror bookmarks list. To create a bookmarks folder, choose Bookmarks ➪ New Folder. Then type a name for the new Bookmarks folder, and click OK. The new bookmark folder appears on your bookmarks menu. You can add the current location to that folder by clicking on the folder name and selecting Add Bookmark.

Configuring Konqueror Options You can change many of the visual attributes of the Konqueror window, including which menu bars and toolbars appear. You can have any of the following bars appear on the Konqueror window: Menubar, Toolbar, Extra Toolbar, Location Toolbar, and Bookmark Toolbar. Select Settings, and then click the bar you want to have appear (or not appear). The bar appears when a check mark is shown next to it. You can modify a variety of options for Konqueror by choosing Settings ➪ Configure Konqueror. The Konqueror Settings window appears, offering the following options: ■

Performance — Display configuration settings that can be used to improve Konqueror performance. You can preload an instance after KDE startup or minimize memory usage.

■

File Management — Configure features such as file tips, previews, and how trash is handled.

■

Previews & Meta-Data — An icon in a Konqueror folder can be made to resemble the contents of the file it represents. For example, if the file is a JPEG image, the icon repre-

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senting the file could be a small version of that image. Using the Previews features, you can limit the size of the file used (1MB is the default) because many massive files could take too long to refresh on the screen. You can also choose to have any thumbnail embedded in a file to be used as the icon or have the size of the icon reflect the shape of the image used. ■

File Associations — Describes which programs to launch for each file type. If you prefer a certain image viewer, text editor, or other application for handling your data, you should configure those applications to launch for those data types.

■

Web Browsing — Click the Browsing selection to open a window to configure the Web browser features of Konqueror. By enabling Form Completion, Konqueror can save form data you type and, at a later time, fill that information into other forms. If your computer has limited resources, you can speed up the page display by clearing the Automatically Load Images check box or by disabling animations.

■

AdBlock Filters — Click here to create a list of URLs that are filtered as you browse the Web. Filtering is based on frame and image names. Filtered URLs can be either thrown away or replaced with an image. You can also import and export lists of filters here.

■

Web Shortcuts — Display a list of keyword shortcuts you can use to go to different Internet sites. For example, follow the word “ask” with a search string to search the Ask (www.ask.com) Web site.

■

Cache — Indicate how much space on your hard disk can be used to store the sites you have visited (based on the value in the Disk Cache Size field).

■

Proxy — Click Proxy to configure Konqueror to access the Internet through a proxy server (by default, Konqueror tries to connect there directly). You need to enter the address and port number of the computer providing HTTP and/or FTP proxy services. Alternatively, you can have Konqueror try to automatically detect the proxy configuration.

■

Fonts — Choose which fonts to use, by default, for various fonts needed on Web pages (standard font, fixed font, serif font, sans serif font, cursive font, and fantasy font). The serif fonts are typically used in body text, while sans serif fonts are often used in headlines. You can also set the Minimum and Medium font sizes.

■

Stylesheets — Choose whether to use the default stylesheet, a user-defined stylesheet, or a custom stylesheet. The stylesheet sets the font family, font sizes, and colors that are applied to Web pages. (This won’t change particular font requests made by the Web page.) If you select a custom stylesheet, click the Customize tab to customize your own fonts and colors.

■

History Sidebar — Modify the behavior of the list of sites you have visited (the history). By default, the most recent 500 URLs are stored, and after 500 days (KNOPPIX) or 90 days (Fedora), a URL is dropped from the list. There’s also a button to clear your history. (To view your history list in Konqueror, open the left side panel, and then click the tiny scroll icon.)

■

Cookies — Choose whether cookies are enabled in Konqueror. By default, you are asked to confirm that it is okay each time a Web site tries to create or modify a cookie. You can change that to either accept or reject all cookies. You can also set policies for acceptance or rejection of cookies based on host and domain names.

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■

Crypto — Display a list of secure certificates that can be accepted by the Konqueror browser. By default, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) versions 2 and 3 certificates are accepted, as is TLS support (if supported by the server). You can also choose to be notified when you are entering or leaving a secure Web site.

■

Browser Identification — Set how Konqueror identifies itself when it accesses a Web site. By default, Konqueror tells the Web site that it is the Mozilla Web browser. You can select Konqueror to appear as different Web browsers to specific sites. You must sometimes do this when a site denies you access because you do not have a specific type of browser (even though Konqueror may be fully capable of displaying the content).

■

Java and JavaScript — Enable or disable Java and JavaScript content contained in Web pages in your Konqueror window.

■

Plugins — Display a list of directories that Konqueror will search to find plug-ins. Konqueror can also scan your computer to find plug-ins that are installed for other browsers in other locations.

Managing the KDE Desktop If you have a lot stuff open at the same time, organizing those items can make it much easier to manage your desktop. The KDE 4 Plasma desktop offers many of the traditional ways of managing desktop elements (windows, workspaces, panels, icons, menus, and so on). However, it also offers new ways of grouping and managing your desktop elements.

Managing Windows in the Taskbar When you open a window, a button representing the window appears in the panel at the bottom of the screen. Here is how you can manage windows from the taskbar appearing on that panel: ■

Toggle windows — Left-click any running task in the taskbar to toggle between opening the window and minimizing it.

■

Position windows — You can choose to have the selected window be above or below other windows or displayed in full screen. Right-click the running task in the taskbar and select Advanced. Then choose Keep Above Others, Keep Below Others, or Fullscreen.

■

Move windows — Move a window from the current desktop to any other virtual desktop. Right-click any task in the taskbar, select To Desktop, and then select any desktop number. The window moves to that desktop.

All the windows that are running, regardless of which virtual desktop you are on, appear in the taskbar.

Uncluttering the Desktop If you find yourself with icons all over the desktop, you can organize them from the desktop menu. Right-click the desktop, and then select Align Horizontally or Align Vertically.

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Moving Windows The easiest way to move a window from one location to another is to place the cursor on the window’s title bar, hold down the mouse button and drag the window to a new location, and release the mouse button to drop the window. Another way to do it is to click the window menu button (top-left corner of the title bar), select Move, move the mouse to relocate the window, and then click again to place it. If somehow the window gets stuck in a location where the title bar is off the screen, you can move it back to where you want it by holding down the Alt key and clicking the left mouse button in the inner window. Then move the window where you want it and release.

TIP

Resizing Windows To resize a window, grab anywhere on the outer edge of the window border, and then move the mouse until the window is the size you want. Grab a corner to resize vertically and horizontally at the same time. Grab a side to resize in only one direction. You can also resize a window by clicking the window menu button (top-left corner of the title bar) and selecting Resize. Move the mouse until the window is resized and click to leave it there.

Pinning Windows on the Top or Bottom You can set a window to always stay on top of all other windows or always stay under them. Keeping a window on top can be useful for a small window that you want to always refer to (such as a clock or a small TV viewing window). To pin a window on top of the desktop, click in the window title bar. From the menu that appears, select Advanced ➪ Keep Above Others. Likewise, to keep the window on the bottom, select Advanced ➪ Keep Below Others.

Using Virtual Desktops To give you more space to run applications than will fit on your physical screen, KDE gives you access to several virtual desktops at the same time. Using the 1, 2, 3, and 4 buttons on the panel, you can easily move between the different desktops. Just click the one you want. If you want to move an application from one desktop to another, you can do so from the window menu. Click the window menu button for the window you want to move, click To Desktop, and then select Desktop 1, 2, 3, or 4. The window will disappear from the current desktop and move to the one you selected.

Adding Widgets You want to be able to quickly access the applications that you use most often. One of the best ways to make that possible is to add widgets to the panel or the desktop that can either run continuously (such as a clock or news ticker) or launch the applications you need with a single click.

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To add a KDE widget to the panel: 1. Right-click anywhere on the panel. 2. Click Add Widgets. 3. Select the widget you want to add and click Add Widget.

An icon representing the widget should immediately appear on the panel. (If the panel seems a bit crowded, you might want to remove some widgets you don’t use or add a widget directly to the desktop.) At this point, you can change any properties associated with the widget by right-clicking the widget in the panel and entering the new settings. If you decide later that you no longer want this widget to be available on the panel, right-click it and select Remove. To add a widget to the desktop: 1. Right-click an open area of the desktop. 2. Select Add Widgets from the menu. 3. Select the widget you want from the list that appears and click Add Widget.

If you decide later that you no longer want this widget to be available on the desktop, hover the mouse over it and click the red X to delete it.

Configuring the Desktop If you want to change the look, feel, or behavior of your KDE desktop, the best place to start is the System Settings window. The System Settings window lets you configure dozens of attributes associated with colors, fonts, and screensavers used by KDE. There are also selections that let you do basic computer administration, such as changing date/time settings and modifying your display. To open the System Settings window, select the KickOff menu button (represented by a Fedora logo icon in Fedora) at the lower-left corner of the panel and choose System Settings. The System Settings window appears, as shown in Figure 3-6. Click any item you want to configure, or type into the Search box to find a selection that matches what you type. There are several ways you can change the look-and-feel of your desktop display from the System Settings window. Under the Look & Feel topic, you can select to change the appearance, desktop, notifications, or window behavior.

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FIGURE 3-6 Configure your system in KDE from the System Settings window.

Here are a few of the individual desktop features you may want to change: ■

Change the screen saver — Under the Look & Feel heading, select Desktop ➪ Screen Saver. From the window that appears, there are only a few screensavers available by default. However, by installing the kdeartwork-extras package, you can get a lot more screensavers to choose from. Under the Start Automatically box, select how many minutes of inactivity before the screen saver turns on. You can also click Require Password to require that a password be entered before you can access your display after the screen saver has come on.

If you are working in a place where you want your desktop to be secure, be sure to turn on the Require Password feature. This prevents others from gaining access to your computer when you forget to lock it or shut it off. If you have any virtual terminals open, switch to them and type vlock to lock each of them as well. (You need to install the vlock package if the vlock command isn’t available.)

TIP

■

Change fonts — You can assign different fonts to different places in which fonts appear on the desktop. Under the Look & Feel heading, select Appearance ➪ Fonts. Select one of the categories of fonts (General, Fixed width, Small, Toolbar, Menu, Window title, Taskbar, and Desktop fonts). Then click the Choose box to select a font from the Select Font list box that you want to assign to that category. If the font is available, you will see an example of the text in the Sample text box.

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■

Change the colors — Under the Look & Feel heading in the System Settings window, select Appearance ➪ Colors. The window that appears lets you change the color of selected items on the desktop. Select a whole color scheme from the Color Scheme list box. Or select an item from the Colors tab to change a particular item. Items you can change include text, backgrounds, links, buttons, and title bars. To use 100 dpi fonts, you need to add an entry for 100 dpi fonts to /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. After you make that change, you need to restart the X server for it to take effect.

TIP

Changing Panel Attributes For most people, the panel is the place where they select which desktop is active and which applications are run. You can change panel behavior from the Configure Panel window. Right-click any empty space on your panel, and then select Panel Settings. You can change these features from the Settings window that appears: ■

Size — The Size selection lets you change the size of the Panel from Normal to Tiny, Small, Large, or Custom. For the Custom option, select the exact point size (48 is the default).

■

Location — Change the location of the panel from Bottom to Top, Right, or Left.

The GNOME Desktop GNOME (pronounced guh-nome) provides the desktop environment that you get by default when you install Fedora, Ubuntu, or other Linux system. This desktop environment provides the software that is between your X Window System framework and the look-and-feel provided by the window manager. GNOME is a stable and reliable desktop environment, with a few cool features. As of this writing, GNOME 2.24 is the most recent version of available, although the distribution you are using may or may not include this latest version. Recent GNOME releases include advancements in 3D effects (see “3D Effects with AIGLX” later in this chapter), improved usability features, and an application for using your Webcam. The Online Desktop is a recent feature that is intended to act as a platform for running only online applications (such as Facebook, GMail, and so on). See the section “Configuring a GNOME Online Desktop” later in this chapter for more information.

NOTE

To use your GNOME desktop, you should become familiar with the following components: ■

Metacity (window manager) — The default window manager for GNOME in Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, and others is Metacity. Metacity configuration options let you control such things as themes, window borders, and controls used on your desktop.

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Nautilus (file manager/graphical shell) — When you open a folder (by double-clicking the Home icon on your desktop, for example), the Nautilus window opens and displays the contents of the selected folder. Nautilus can also display other types of content, such as shared folders from Windows computers on the network (using SMB).

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GNOME panels (application/task launcher) — These panels, which line the top and bottom of your screen, are designed to make it convenient for you to launch the applications you use, manage running applications, and work with multiple virtual desktops. By default, the top panel contains menu buttons (Applications, Places, and System), desktop application launchers (Evolution e-mail and Firefox Web browser), a workspace switcher (for managing four virtual desktops), and a clock. Icons appear in the panel when you need software updates or SELinux detects a problem. The bottom panel has a Show Desktop button, window lists, a trash can and workspace switcher.

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Desktop area — The windows and icons you use are arranged on the desktop area, which supports drag-and-drop between applications, a desktop menu (right-click to see it), and icons for launching applications. There is a Computer icon that consolidates CD drives, floppy drives, the file system, and shared network resources in one place.

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Here are some feature additions you may find useful in the most recent versions of GNOME: ■

XSPF playlists in Totem — The Totem video/audio player now includes support for open standard XSPF playlists (www.xspf.org). Other improvements to Totem allow it to interact with content from Web sites.

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Screensaver previews — Previewing screen savers in full-screen mode is now supported.

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Direct DVD burning — Use the Nautilus CD burner feature to burn DVDs directly, without needing to first create an ISO image.

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Dragging from the taskbar — Drag an application from the taskbar to workspaces represented in the panel Workspace Switcher to move the application to a new workspace.

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Nautilus text or button browsing — When saving or opening files or folders in Nautilus, a new toggle button enables you to choose between browsing by clicking on buttons or by typing full path names.

GNOME also includes a set of Preferences windows that enable you to configure different aspects of your desktop. You can change backgrounds, colors, fonts, keyboard shortcuts, and other features related to the look and behavior of the desktop. Figure 3-7 shows how the GNOME desktop environment appears the first time you log in, with a few windows added to the screen. The desktop shown in Figure 3-7 is for Ubuntu. The following sections provide details on using the GNOME desktop.

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FIGURE 3-7 The GNOME desktop environment

Using the Metacity Window Manager The Metacity window manager seems to have been chosen as the default window manager for GNOME because of its simplicity. The creator of Metacity refers to it as a “boring window manager for the adult in you” — and then goes on to compare other window managers to colorful, sugary cereal, while Metacity is characterized as Cheerios.

NOTE

To use 3D effects, your best solution is to use the Compiz window manager, described later in this chapter.

There really isn’t much you can do with Metacity (except get your work done efficiently). Assigning new themes to Metacity and changing colors and window decorations are done through the GNOME preferences (and are described later). A few Metacity themes exist, but expect the number to grow.

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Basic Metacity functions that might interest you are keyboard shortcuts and the workspace switcher. Table 3-4 describes keyboard shortcuts that you can use to get around the Metacity window manager.

TABLE 3-4

Metacity Keyboard Shortcuts Actions

Keystrokes

Window focus

Panel focus

Workspace focus

Cycle forward, with pop-up icons

Alt+Tab

Cycle backward, with pop-up icons

Alt+Shift+Tab

Cycle forward, without pop-up icons

Alt+Esc

Cycle backward, without pop-up icons

Alt+Shift+Esc

Cycle forward among panels

Alt+Ctrl+Tab

Cycle backward among panels

Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Tab

Move to workspace to the right

Ctrl+Alt+right arrow

Move to workspace to the left

Ctrl+Alt+left arrow

Move to upper workspace

Ctrl+Alt+up arrow

Move to lower workspace

Ctrl+Alt+down arrow

Minimize/maximize all windows

Ctrl+Alt+D

Show window menu

Alt+Space bar

Close menu

Esc

Another Metacity feature of interest is the Workspace Switcher. Four virtual workspaces appear in the Workspace Switcher on the GNOME panel. You can do the following with the Workspace Switcher: ■

Choose current workspace — Four virtual workspaces appear in the Workspace Switcher. Click any of the four virtual workspaces to make it your current workspace.

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Move windows to other workspaces — Click any window, each represented by a tiny rectangle in a workspace, to drag-and-drop it to another workspace. Likewise, you can drag an application from the Window List to move that application to another workspace.

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Add more workspaces — Right-click the Workspace Switcher, and select Preferences. You can add workspaces (up to 32).

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Name workspaces — Right-click the Workspace Switcher and select Preferences. Click in the Workspaces pane to change names of workspaces to any names you choose.

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You can view and change information about Metacity controls and settings using the gconf-editor window (type gconf-editor from a Terminal window). As the window says, it is not the recommended way of changing preferences, so when possible, you should change the desktop through GNOME preferences. However, gconf-editor is a good way to see descriptions of each Metacity feature. From the gconf-editor window, select apps ➪ metacity, and then choose from general, global_ keybindings, keybindings_commands, window_keybindings, and workspace_names. Click each key to see its value, along with short and long descriptions of the key.

Using the GNOME Panels The GNOME panels are placed on the top and bottom of the GNOME desktop. From those panels you can start applications (from buttons or menus), see what programs are active, and monitor how your system is running. There are also many ways to change the top and bottom panels — by adding applications or monitors or by changing the placement or behavior of the panel, for example. Right-click any open space on either panel to see the Panel menu. Figure 3-8 shows the Panel menu on the top.

FIGURE 3-8 The GNOME Panel menu

From GNOME’s Panel menu, you can choose from a variety of functions, including: ■

Add to Panel — Add an applet, menu, launcher, drawer, or button.

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Properties — Change the panel’s position, size, and background properties.

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Delete This Panel — Delete the current panel.

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New Panel — Add panels to your desktop in different styles and locations.

You can also work with items on a panel. For example, you can: ■

Move items — To move an item on a panel, right-click it, select move, and then drag-anddrop it to a new position.

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■

Resize items — Some elements, such as the Window List, can be resized by clicking an edge and dragging it to the new size.

■

Use the Window List — Tasks running on the desktop appear in the Window List area. Click a task to minimize or maximize it.

3

The following sections describe some things you can do with the GNOME panel.

Using the Applications and System Menus Click Applications on the top panel, and you see categories of applications and system tools that you can select. Click the application you want to launch. To add an item from a menu so that it can launch from the panel, drag-and-drop the item you want to the panel. You can add items to your GNOME menus. To do that, right-click any of the menu names, and then select Edit Menus. The window that appears lets you add or delete menus associated with the Applications and System menus. You can also add items to launch from those menus by selecting New Item and typing the name, command, and comment for the item.

Adding an Applet There are several small applications, called applets, that you can run directly on the GNOME panel. These applications can show information you may want to see on an ongoing basis or may just provide some amusement. To see what applets are available and to add applets that you want to your panel, perform the following steps: 1. Right-click an open space in the panel so that the panel menu appears. 2. Select Add to Panel. An Add to Panel window appears. 3. Select from among several dozen applets, including a clock, dictionary lookup, stock ticker, and weather report. The applet you select appears on the panel, ready for you to use.

Figure 3-9 shows (from left to right) applets for eyes, system monitor, weather report, network monitor, and wanda the fish.

FIGURE 3-9 Placing applets on the panel makes it easy to access them.

After an applet is installed, right-click it on the panel to see what options are available. For example, select Preferences for the stock ticker, and you can add or delete stocks whose prices you want to monitor. If you don’t like the applet’s location, right-click it, click Move, slide the mouse until the applet is where you want it (even to another panel), and click to set its location.

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If you no longer want an applet to appear on the panel, right-click it, and then click Remove From Panel. The icon representing the applet disappears. If you find that you have run out of room on your panel, you can add a new panel to another part of the screen, as described in the next section.

Adding Another Panel You can have several panels on your GNOME desktop. You can add panels that run along the entire bottom, top, or side of the screen. To add a panel, do the following: 1. Right-click an open space in the panel so that the Panel menu appears. 2. Select New Panel. A new panel appears on the side of the screen. 3. Right-click an open space in the new panel and select Properties. 4. From the Panel Properties, select where you want the panel from the Orientation box (Top, Bottom, Left, or Right).

After you’ve added a panel, you can add applets or application launchers to it as you did to the default panel. To remove a panel, right-click it and select Delete This Panel.

Adding an Application Launcher Icons on your panel represent a Web browser and several office productivity applications. You can add your own icons to launch applications from the panel as well. To add a new application launcher to the panel, do the following: 1. Right-click in an open space on the panel. 2. Select Add to Panel ➪ Application Launcher from the menu. All application categories from your Applications and System menus appear. 3. Select the arrow next to the category of application you want, and then select Add. An icon representing the application appears on the panel.

To launch the application you just added, simply click the icon on the panel. If the application you want to launch is not on one of your menus, you can build a launcher yourself as follows: 1. Right-click in an open space on the panel. 2. Select Add to Panel ➪ Custom Application Launcher ➪ Add. The Create Launcher window appears. 3. Provide the following information for the application that you want to add: ■

Type — Select Application (to launch a regular GUI application) or Application in Terminal. Use Application in Terminal if the application is a character-based or ncurses application. (Applications written using the ncurses library run in a Terminal window but offer screen-oriented mouse and keyboard controls.)

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■

Name — A name to identify the application (this appears in the tooltip when your mouse is over the icon).

■

Command — The command line that is run when the application is launched. Use the full path name, plus any required options.

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Comment — A comment describing the application. It also appears when you later move your mouse over the launcher.

3

4. Click the Icon box (it might say No Icon). Select one of the icons shown and click OK. Alternatively, you can browse your file system to choose an icon. 5. Click OK.

The application should now appear in the panel. Click it to start the application.

NOTE

Icons available to represent your application are contained in the /usr/share/ pixmaps directory. These icons are either in .png or .xpm format. If there isn’t an icon in the directory you want to use, create your own (in one of those two formats) and assign it to the application.

Adding a Drawer A drawer is an icon that you can click to display other icons representing menus, applets, and launchers; it behaves just like a panel. Essentially, any item you can add to a panel you can add to a drawer. By adding a drawer to your GNOME panel, you can include several applets and launchers that together take up the space of only one icon. Click the drawer to show the applets and launchers as though they were being pulled out of a drawer icon on the panel. To add a drawer to your panel, right-click the panel and select Add to Panel ➪ Drawer. A drawer appears on the panel. Right-click it, and add applets or launchers to it as you would to a panel. Click the icon again to retract the drawer. Figure 3-10 shows a portion of the panel with an open drawer that includes an icon for launching a volume monitor, a weather report, and Tomboy sticky notes.

FIGURE 3-10 Add launchers or applets to a drawer on your GNOME panel.

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Changing Panel Properties Those panel properties you can change are limited to the orientation, size, hiding policy, and background. To open the Panel Properties window that applies to a specific panel, right-click on an open space on the panel and choose Properties. The Panel Properties window that appears includes the following values: ■

Orientation — Move the panel to different locations on the screen by clicking on a new position.

■

Size — Select the size of your panel by choosing its height in pixels (48 pixels by default).

■

Expand — Select this check box to have the panel expand to fill the entire side, or clear the check box to make the panel only as wide as the applets it contains.

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AutoHide — Select whether a panel is automatically hidden (appearing only when the mouse pointer is in the area).

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Show Hide Buttons — Choose whether the Hide/Unhide buttons (with pixmap arrows on them) appear on the edges of the panel.

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Arrows on hide buttons — If you select Show Hide Buttons, you can choose to have arrows on those buttons.

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Background — From the Background tab, you can assign a color to the background of the panel, assign a pixmap image, or just leave the default (which is based on the current system theme). Click the Background Image check box if you want to select an Image for the background, and then select an image, such as a tile from /usr/share/backgrounds/ tiles or other directory.

I usually turn on the AutoHide feature and turn off the Hide buttons. Using AutoHide gives you more desktop space to work with. When you move your mouse to the edge where the panel is, the panel pops up — so you don’t need Hide buttons.

TIP

Using the Nautilus File Manager At one time, file managers did little more than let you run applications, create data files, and open folders. These days, as the information a user needs expands beyond the local system, file managers are expected to also display Web pages, access FTP sites, and play multimedia content. The Nautilus file manager, which is the default GNOME file manager, is an example of just such a file manager. When you open the Nautilus file manager window (for example, by opening the Home icon or other folder on your desktop), you see the name of the location you are viewing (such as the folder name) and what that location contains (files, folders, and applications). Double-click a folder to open that folder in a new window. Select your folder name in the lower-left corner of the window to see the file system hierarchy above the current folder. GNOME remembers whatever size, location, and other setting you had for the folder the last time you closed it and returns it to that state the next time you open it. To see more controls, right-click a folder and select Browse Folder to open it. Icons on the toolbar of the Nautilus window let you move forward and back among the directories and Web sites you visit. To

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3

move up the directory structure, click the up arrow. If you prefer to type the path to the folder you want, instead of clicking icons, you can toggle between button-based and text-based location bars (click the paper and pencil icon next to the location buttons to change the view). Figure 3-11 is an example of the file manager window displaying the home directory of a user named chris in browse mode.

FIGURE 3-11 The Nautilus file manager enables you to move around the file system, open directories, launch applications, and open Samba folders.

To refresh the view of the folder, click the Reload button. The Home button takes you to your home page, and the Computer button lets you see the same type of information you would see from a My Computer icon on a Windows system (CD drive, floppy drive, hard disk file systems, and network folders). Icons in Nautilus often indicate the type of data that a particular file contains. The contents or file extension of each file can determine which application is used to work with the file, or you can right-click an icon to open the file it represents with a particular application or viewer. Here are some of the more interesting features of Nautilus: ■

Sidebar — From the Browse Folder view described previously, select View ➪ Side Pane to have a sidebar appear in the left column of the screen. From the sidebar, you can click a pull-down menu that represents different types of information you can select one at a time. The Tree tab, for example, shows a tree view of the directory structure, so you can easily traverse your directories. The Notes tab lets you add notes that become associated with the current Directory or Web page, and the History tab displays a history of directories you have visited, enabling you to click those items to return to the sites they represent. There

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is also an Emblems tab that lets you drag-and-drop emblems on files or folders to indicate something about the file or folder (emblems include icons representing drafts, urgent, bug, and multimedia). ■

Windows file and printer sharing — If your computer is connected to a LAN on which Windows computers are sharing files and printers, you can view those resources from Nautilus. Type smb: in the Open Location box (select File ➪ Open Location to get there) to see available workgroups. Click a workgroup to see computers from that workgroup that are sharing files and printers. Figure 3-12 shows an example of a local Nautilus window displaying icons representing folders shared from a Window computer named bluestreak that is accessible on the local LAN. The shared folder from that computer is named My Doc Blue.

FIGURE 3-12 Display shared Windows file and printer servers (SMB) in Nautilus.

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MIME types and file types — To handle different types of content that may be encountered in the Nautilus window, you can set applications to respond based on MIME type and file type. With a folder displayed, right-click a file for which you want to assign an application. Click either Open With an Application or Open With a Viewer. If no application or viewer has been assigned for the file type, click Associate Application to be able to select an application. From the Add File Types window, you can add an application based on the file extension and MIME type representing the file.

■

Drag-and-drop — You can use drag-and-drop within the Nautilus window, between the Nautilus and the desktop, or among multiple Nautilus windows. As other GNOMEcompliant applications become available, they are expected to also support the drag-anddrop feature.

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If you would like more information on the Nautilus file manager, visit the GNOME Web site (www.gnome.org/nautilus).

3D Effects with AIGLX Several different initiatives have made strides in recent years to bring 3D desktop effects to Linux. openSUSE has the Xgl project (http://en.opensuse.org/Xgl), while Ubuntu and Fedora use AIGLX (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RenderingProject/aiglx). The goal of the Accelerated Indirect GLX project (AIGLX) is to add 3D effects to everyday desktop systems. It does this by implementing OpenGL (http://opengl.org) accelerated effects using the Mesa (www.mesa3d.org) open source OpenGL implementation. Currently, AIGLX supports a limited set of video cards and implements only a few 3D effects, but it does offer some insight into the eye candy that is in the works. Direct rendering infrastructure (DRI) is required for most video cards supporting AIGLX. However, some NVidia cards that don’t support DRI can be used, but they require that you get the closed source binary drivers made available from NVidia. Cards that are known to not work with AIGLX include ATI Rage 128 and Mach 64, Matrox G200 through G550, and 3DFX Voodoo 1 and 2. If your video card was properly detected and configured, you may be able to simply turn on the Desktop Effects feature to see the effects that have been implemented so far. To turn on Desktop Effects, select System ➪ Preferences ➪ Look and Feel ➪ Desktop Effects. When the Desktop Effects window appears, select Enable Desktop Effects. Enabling this does the following: ■

Stops the current window manager and starts the Compiz window manager.

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Enables the Windows Wobble When Moved effect. With this effect on, when you grab the title bar of the window to move it, the window will wobble as it moves. Menus and other items that open on the desktop also wobble.

■

Enables the Workspaces on a Cube effect. Drag a window from the desktop to the right or the left, and the desktop will rotate like a cube, with each of your desktop workspaces appearing as a side of that cube. Drop the window on the workspace where you want it to go. You can also click the Workspace Switcher applet in the bottom panel to rotate the cube to display different workspaces.

Other nice desktop effects result from using the Alt+Tab key combination to tab among different running windows. As you press Alt+Tab, a thumbnail of each window scrolls across the screen and the window it represents is highlighted. Figure 3-13 shows an example of a Compiz desktop with AIGLX enabled. The figure illustrates a file manager window being moved from one workspace to another as those workspaces rotate on a cube.

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FIGURE 3-13 Rotate workspaces on a cube with AIGLX desktop effects enabled.

The following are some interesting effects you can get with your 3D AIGLX desktop: ■

Spin cube — Hold down the Ctrl+Alt keys and press the right or left arrow key. The desktop cube spins to each successive workspace (forward or back).

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Slowly rotate cube — Hold down the Ctrl+Alt keys, press and hold down the left mouse button, and move the cursor around on the screen. The cube will move slowly with the cursor among the workspaces.

■

Tab through windows — Hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key. You will see reduced versions of all your windows on a strip in the middle of your screen, with the current window highlighted in the middle. Still holding down the Alt key, press Tab or Shift+Tab to move forward or back through the windows. Release the keys when the window you want is highlighted.

■

Scale and separate windows — If your desktop is cluttered, hold down Ctrl+Alt and press the up arrow key. Windows will shrink down and separate on the desktop. Still holding down Ctrl+Alt, use your arrow keys to highlight the window you want and release the keys to have that window come to the surface.

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■

Scale and separate workspaces — Hold down Ctrl+Alt and press the down arrow key to see reduced images of the workspace shown on a strip. Still holding down Ctrl+Alt, use the right and left arrow keys to move among the different workspaces. Release the keys when the workspace you want is highlighted.

■

Send the current window to the next workspace — Hold down the Ctrl +Alt+Shift keys together and press the left or right arrow key. The current window will move to the next workspace to the left or right, respectively.

■

Slide windows around — Press and hold down the left mouse button, and then press the left, right, up, or down arrow key to slide the current window around on the screen.

3

If you get tired of wobbling windows and spinning cubes, you can easily turn off the AIGLX 3D effects and return Metacity as the window manager. Select System ➪ Preferences ➪ Desktop Effects again and toggle off the Enable Desktop Effects button to turn off the feature. If you have a supported video card, but find that you are not able to turn on the Desktop Effects, check that your X server started properly. In particular, make sure that your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is properly configured. Make sure that dri and glx are loaded in the Module section. Also, add an extensions section anywhere in the file (typically at the end of the file) that appears as follows: Section “extensions” Option “Composite” EndSection

Another option is to add the following line to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in the Device section: Option “XAANoOffscreenPixmaps”

The XAANoOffscreenPixmaps option will improve performance. Check your /var/log/Xorg.log file to make sure that DRI and AIGLX features were started correctly. The messages in that file can help you debug other problems as well.

Changing GNOME Preferences There are many ways to change the behavior, look, and feel of your GNOME desktop. Most GNOME preferences can be modified from submenus on the Preferences menu (select System ➪ Preferences). Unlike earlier versions of GNOME, boundaries between preferences related to the window manager (Metacity), file manager (Nautilus), and the GNOME desktop itself have been blurred. Preferences for all of these features are available from the Preferences menu. The following items highlight some of the preferences you might want to change: ■

Accessibility — If you have difficulty operating a mouse or keyboard or seeing the screen, the Assistive Technologies window lets you adapt mouse and keyboard settings to make it easier for you to operate your computer. It also lets you magnify selected applications. (Select System ➪ Preferences ➪ Personal ➪ Assistive Technologies to open the Assistive Technologies window.)

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Desktop Background — You can choose a solid color or an image to use as wallpaper. Select System ➪ Preferences ➪ Look and Feel ➪ Appearance and then the Background tab. If you choose to use a solid color (by selecting No Wallpaper), click the Color box, select a color from the palette, and click OK. To use wallpaper for your background, open the folder containing the image you want to use, and then drag the image into the Desktop Wallpaper pane on the Desktop Preferences window. You can choose from a variety of images in the /usr/share/nautilus/patterns and /usr/share/backgrounds/tiles directories. Then choose to have the wallpaper image tiled (repeated pattern), centered, scaled (in proportion), or stretched (using any proportion to fill the screen).

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Screensaver — Choose from dozens of screen savers from the Screensaver window. Select System ➪ Preferences ➪ Look and Feel ➪ Screensaver. Choose Random to have your screen saver chosen randomly from available screen savers, or select one that you like from the list to use all the time. Next, choose how long your screen must be idle before the screen saver starts (the default is 10 minutes). You can also choose to lock the screen when the screen saver is active, so a password is required to return to the desktop. If you see only a few screen savers, you might want to install the xscreensaver-extras and xscreensaver-glextras packages to get a bunch more.

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Theme — Choose an entire theme of elements to be used on your desktop, if you like. From the Appearance window, select the Theme tab. A desktop theme affects not only the background but also the way that many buttons and menu selections appear. Only a few themes are available for the window manager (Metacity) in the Fedora distribution, but you can get a bunch of other themes from themes.freshmeat.net (click Metacity). To modify a theme, select the Customize button and then click the Controls tab to choose the type of controls that you want to use on your desktop. Click the Window Border tab to select from different themes that change the title bar and other borders of your windows. Click the Icons tab to choose different icons to represent items on your desktop. Themes change immediately as you click or when you drag a theme name on the desktop.

Exiting GNOME When you are done with your work, you can either log out from your current session or shut down your computer completely. To exit from GNOME, do the following: 1. Click the System button from the panel. 2. Select Log Out from the menu. A pop-up window appears, asking if you want to Log Out. Some versions will also ask if you want to Shut Down or Restart the computer. 3. Select Log Out from the pop-up menu. This logs you out and returns you to either the graphical login screen or to your shell login prompt. (If you select Shut Down, the system shuts down, and if you select Reboot, the system restarts.) 4. Click OK to finish exiting from GNOME.

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If you are unable to get to the Log Out button (if, for example, your panel crashed), there are two other exit methods. Try one of these ways, depending on how you started the desktop: ■

If you started the desktop from the graphical display manager or by typing startx from your login shell, press Ctrl+Backspace to end your GNOME session.

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If your screen is completely unresponsive (the mouse and keyboard aren’t working), you might have to reboot your computer. If possible, log in to the computer over the network and type init 6 (as the root user) to reboot.

Although these are not the most graceful ways to exit the desktop, they work. You should be able to log in again and restart the desktop.

Configuring a GNOME Online Desktop The GNOME Online Desktop project (http://live.gnome.org/OnlineDesktop) represents a new way of approaching desktop computing. It acknowledges that peoples’ stuff (documents, digital images, videos, and so on) and activities (searches, blogging, e-mail, instant messaging, news feeds, and so on) are moving from the local hard disk to the Internet. The first experimental release of the GNOME Online Desktop was distributed near the end of 2007. However, because it is part of the GNOME project, many major Linux distributions now offer it. Although it is still experimental, GNOME Online Desktop offers an interesting new way to work with your online accounts. The centerpiece of the GNOME Online Desktop project is the sidebar referred to as BigBoard (http://live.gnome.org/BigBoard). From BigBoard, you consolidate icons and menus to connect to your online photo services (such as Flickr), retail accounts (such as Amazon), movie rentals (such as Netflix), and others. It also keeps track of the files and applications you use locally. The settings that drive your personal Online Desktop are themselves stored online. A GNOME.org account can store information about your desktop applications. A Mugshot (http://mugshot.org) account lets you tie together connections to your online friends and activities. The information is downloaded to your desktop when you log in to the Online Desktop. That allows the Online Desktop concept to move away from a single computer, so you someday can have your whole desktop setup available from any computer with an Internet connection. To get started with Online Desktop, install the online-desktop package. Then return to the login screen and select Session ➪ Online Desktop from the login screen and log in. Create a user account at GNOME.org and Mugshot.org. Then configure your Mugshot account to connect to your accounts at popular sites such as Amazon.com, Flickr.com, Netflix.com, and others.

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From your Online Desktop sidebar, log in to your Mugshot account. Your Online Desktop sidebar will become populated with your configured online accounts, popular applications, links to friends’ accounts, and other items. Figure 3-14 shows an example of an Online Desktop in Fedora.

FIGURE 3-14 Use Online Desktop and Mugshot to connect to online services and friends.

Small icons beneath your user name represent the configured online services. A search box lets you select from a half dozen different search engines. Popular applications and files you have opened recently appear on the sidebar. You can also see your Google calendar and the people you have invited to be your friends. Mugshot provides the site for configuring many Online Desktop features. You can see the same information from your Mugshot site that appears on your Online Desktop. The Mugshot icon in the bottom panel displays stacks of activities for you and your other Mugshot friends.

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Because Online Desktop is still under development, expect to have many more features and services available by the time you read this text. In particular, work is being done to integrate online applications, so you will be able to work with Web applications to use your documents, spreadsheets, and other important information.

Configuring Your Own Desktop Today’s modern desktop computer systems are made to spoon-feed you your operating system. In the name of ease of use, some desktop environments spend a lot of resources on fancy panels, complex control centers, and busy applets. In short, they can become bloated. Many technically inclined people want a more streamlined desktop — or at least want to choose their own bells and whistles. They don’t want to have to wait for windows to redraw or menus to come up. Linux enables those people to forget the complete desktop environments and configure: ■

X — The X Window System provides the framework of choice for Linux and most UNIX systems. When you configure X yourself, you can choose the video driver, monitor settings, mouse configuration, and other basic features needed to get your display working properly.

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Window manager — Dozens of window managers are available to use with X on a Linux system. Window managers add borders and buttons to otherwise bare X windows. They add colors and graphics to backgrounds, menus, and windows. Window managers also define how you can use keyboard and mouse combinations to operate your desktop.

You need to configure X directly only if your desktop isn’t working (the desktop may appear scrambled or may just plain crash). You may choose to configure X if you want to tune it to give you higher resolutions or more colors than you get by default. Still to come in this chapter: examining tools for tuning X and, in particular, working with the xorg.conf file. You’ll also explore a few popular window managers that you might want to try out. Slackware Linux is used to illustrate how to choose and configure a window manager because Slackware users tend to like simple, direct ways of working with the desktop (when they need a desktop at all).

Configuring X Before 2004, most Linux distributions used the X server from the XFree86 project (www.xfree86.org). Because of licensing issues, many of the major Linux vendors (including Red Hat, SUSE, and Slackware) changed to the X server from X.Org (www.X.org). The descriptions of how to get X going on your machine assume you are using the X.Org X server. To determine which X server is installed on your system, from a Terminal window type man Xorg and man XFree86. If you have only one X server installed on your computer (which you probably do), only the one installed will show a man page. While you are there, press the spacebar to page through the features of your X server.

NOTE

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If you are able to start a desktop successfully and your mouse, keyboard, and screen all seem to be behaving, you may not have to do anything more to configure X. However, if you can’t start the desktop or you want to adjust some basic features (such as the screen resolution or number of colors supported), the following sections offer some ideas on how to go about doing those things.

Creating a Working X Configuration File If your desktop crashes immediately or shows only garbled text, try to create a new X configuration file. With the X.Org X server, that file is /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

NOTE

In XFree86, the configuration file, which has basically the same format, is /etc/X11/XF86Config.

To have X try to create a working xorg.conf file for you to use, do the following from a Terminal window as root user: 1. If Linux booted to a command prompt, go to the next step. However, if it tried to start X automatically, you might have an illegible screen. In that case, press these keys together: Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. It should kill your X server and get you back to a command prompt. If X tries to restart (and is still messed up), press Ctrl+Alt+F2. When you see the command prompt, log in as root and type init 3. This will temporarily bring you down to a nongraphical state. 2. To have X probe your video hardware and create a new configuration file, type: # Xorg -configure

3. The file x.org.conf.new should appear in your home directory. To test if this new configuration file works, type the following to start the X server: # X -xf86config /root/xorg.conf.new

A gray background with an X in the middle should appear. Move the mouse to move the X pointer. If that succeeds, you have a working xorg.conf file to use. 4. Press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to exit the X server. 5. Copy the new configuration file to where it is picked up the next time X starts. # cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Chances are that you have a very basic X configuration that you may want to tune further.

Getting New X Drivers Working video drivers in Linux are available with most video cards you can purchase today. However, to get some advanced features from your video cards (such as 3D acceleration) you may need to get proprietary drivers directly from the video manufacturers. In particular, you may want to get drivers from NVidia and ATI.

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For Ubuntu, Fedora, and many other major Linux distributions, NVidia and ATI drivers have been packaged for the particular kernel you are running. Because these drivers are not open source, however, you typically have to enable third-party or non-free software repositories to get them to work. If your Linux system doesn’t have such repositories available, to get new drivers for video cards or chipsets from NVidia, go to the NVidia site (www.nvidia.com) and click the Download Drivers button. Follow the link to Linux and FreeBSD drivers. Links from the page that appears will take you to a Web page from which you can download the new driver and get instructions for installing it. For ATI video cards and chipsets, go to www.ati.com and select Drivers & Software. Follow the links to Linux drivers and related installation instructions.

Tuning Up Your X Configuration File The xorg.conf file might look a bit complicated when you first start working with it. However, chances are that you will need to change only a few key elements in it. As root user, open the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file in any text editor. Here are some things you can look for: ■

Mouse — Look for an InputDevice section with a Mouse0 or Mouse1 identifier. That section for a simple two-button, PS2 mouse might look as follows: Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Mouse0” Driver “mouse” Option “Protocol” “PS/2” Option “Device” “/dev/psaux” EndSection

If you are unable to use some feature of the mouse, such as a middle wheel, you might be able to get it working with an entry that looks more like the following: Section “InputDevice” Identifier “Mouse0” Driver “mouse” Option “Protocol” “IMPS/2” Option “Device” “/dev/psaux” Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5” EndSection

Don’t change the mouse identifier, but you can change the protocol and add the ZAxisMapping line to enable your wheel mouse. Try restarting X and trying your mouse wheel on something like a Web page to see if you can scroll up and down with it. Your mouse might be connected in a different way (such as a bus or serial mouse) or may have different buttons to enable. Tools for configuring your mouse are distribution-specific. Try mouseconfig, mouseadmin, or system-config-mouse to reconfigure your mouse from the command line.

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Monitor — The Monitor section defines attributes of your monitor. There are generic settings you can use if you don’t exactly know the model of your monitor. Changing the Horizontal Sync and Vertical Refresh rates without checking your monitor’s technical specifications is not recommended; you could damage the monitor. Here’s an example of an entry that will work on many LCD panels: Section “Monitor” Identifier “Monitor0” VendorName “Monitor Vendor” ModelName “LCD Panel 1024x768” HorizSync 31.5 - 48.5 VertRefresh 40.0 - 70.0 EndSection

Here’s an entry for a generic CRT monitor that will work on many CRTs: Section “Monitor” Identifier “Monitor0” VendorName “Monitor Vendor” ModelName “Generic Monitor, 1280x1024 @ 74 Hz” HorizSync 31.5 - 79.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 90.0 EndSection

If a tool is available to select your monitor model directly, that would be the best way to go. For example, in Red Hat systems, you would run system-config-xfree86 to change monitor settings. ■

Video device — The Device section is where you identify the driver to use with your video device and any options to use with it. It is important to get this section right. The Xorg command described earlier usually does a good job detecting the driver. If you want to change to a different one, this is where to do so. Here’s an example of the Device section after I added a video driver from NVIDIA to my system (the driver name is nv): Section “Device” Identifier Driver VendorName BoardName BusID EndSection

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“Card0” “nv” “nVidia Corporation” “Unknown Board” “PCI:1:0:0”

Screen resolution — The last major piece of information you may want to add is the screen resolution and color depth. There will be a screen resolution associated with each video card installed on your computer. The Screen section defines default color depths (such as 8, 16, or 24) and modes (such as 1024 × 768, 800 × 600, or 640 × 480). Set the DefaultDepth to the number of bits representing color depth for your system, and then add a Modes line to set the screen resolution.

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To read more about how to set options in your xorg.conf file, type man xorg.conf. If your X server is XFree86, type man XF86Config.

Choosing a Window Manager Fully integrated desktop environments have become somewhat unfriendly to changing out window managers. However, you can completely bypass KDE or GNOME, if you like, and start your desktop simply with X and a window manager of your choice. Although I’m using Slackware as the reference distribution for describing how to change window managers, the concept is the same on other Linux systems. In general, if no desktop environment is running in Linux, you can start it by typing the following: $ startx

This command starts up your desktop environment or window manager, depending on how your system is configured. Although a variety of configuration files are read and commands are run, essentially which desktop you get depends on the contents of two files: ■

/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc — If a user doesn’t specifically request a particular desktop

environment or window manager, the default desktop settings will come from the contents of this file. The xinitrc file is the system-wide X configuration file. Different Linux systems use different xinitrc files. ■

$HOME/.xinitrc — The .xinitrc file is used to let individual users set up their own desktop startup information. Any user can add a .xinitrc file to his or her own home directory. The result is that the contents of that file will override any system-wide settings. If you do create your own .xinitrc file, it should have as its last line exec windowmanager, where windowmanager is the name of your window manager; for example: exec /usr/bin/blackbox

Slackware has at least seven different window managers from which you can choose, making it a good place to try out a few. It also includes a tool called xwmconfig, which lets you change the window manager system-wide (in the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file). To use that tool, as the root user simply type xwmconfig from any shell on a Slackware system. Select the window manager you want to try from that screen and select OK. That window manager will start the next time you run startx (provided you don’t override it by creating your own .xinitrc file). Here are your choices: ■

Xfce (www.xfce.org) — The Xfce window manager is designed to be lightweight and fast. Xfce is very popular for running Linux on inexpensive PCs, such as the ASUS EeePC. Figure 3-15 shows an example of an Xfce desktop in Fedora.

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FIGURE 3-15 Xfce offers many powerful features in an efficient desktop.

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Blackbox (http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net) — Another lightweight window manager that strives to require few library dependencies so it can run in many environments. It offers many features for setting colors and styles.

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FluxBox (http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net) — Based on Blackbox (0.61.1), FluxBox adds nice features such as window tabs (where you can join together multiple windows so they appear as multiple tabs on a single window). It also includes an icon bar and adds some useful mouse features (such as using your mouse wheel to change workspaces).

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Window Maker (www.windowmaker.info) — Window Maker is a clone of the NEXTSTEP graphical interface, a popular UNIX workstation of the 1980s and 1990s. It is a particularly attractive window manager, with support for themes, various window decorations, and features for changing backgrounds and animations, and adding applets (called docapps).

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FVWM (www.fvwm.org) — This window manager supports full internationalization, window manager hints, and improved font features. Interesting features include window shading in all directions (even diagonal) and side titles (including text displayed vertically).

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FVWM-95 (http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net) — A version of FVWM that was created to look and feel like Windows 95.

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Twm (Tabbed Window Manager) — Although no longer actively maintained, some people still use twm when they want a truly bare-bones desktop. Until you click the left mouse button in twm, there’s nothing on the screen. Use the menu that pops up to open and close windows.

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Many other window managers are available for Linux as well. To check out some more, visit the Xwinman Web site (http://xwinman.org). Once the system default is set for your window manager, users can set their own window manager to override that decision. The following section describes how to do that.

Choosing Your Personal Window Manager Simply adding an exec line with the name of the window manager you want to use to your own .xinitrc file in your home directory causes startx to start that window manager for you. Here is an example of the contents of a .xinitrc to start the Window Maker window manager: exec /usr/bin/wmaker

Make sure that the file is executable (chmod 755 $HOME/.xinitrc). The Window Maker window manager should start the next time you start your desktop. Other window managers you can choose include Blackbox (/usr/X11R6/bin/blackbox), FluxBox (/usr/X11R6/bin/fluxbox), FVWM (/usr/X11R6/bin/fluxbox), FVWM-95 (/usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm95), and twm (/usr/X11R6/ bin/twm).

Getting More Information If you tried configuring X and you still have a server that crashes or has a garbled display, your video card may either be unsupported or require special configuration. Here are a couple of locations you can check for further information: ■

X.Org (www.x.org) — The latest information about the X servers that come with Fedora is available from the X.Org Web site. X.Org is the freeware version of X recently used by many major Linux distributions to replace the XFree86 X server.

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X documentation — README files specific to different types of video cards are delivered with the X.Org X server. Visit the X doc directory (/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc) for a README file specific to the type of video card (or more specifically, the video chipset) you are using. A lot of good information can also be found on the xorg.conf man page (type man xorg.conf).

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Summary Complete desktop environments that run in Linux can rival desktop systems from any operating system. KDE and GNOME are the most popular desktop environments available today for Linux. For people who want a sleeker, more lightweight desktop environment, a variety of simple window managers (Blackbox, Xfce, FVWM, twm, FluxBox, and many others) are available to use in Linux as well. The KDE desktop is well known for its large set of integrated applications (office productivity tools, games, multimedia, and other applications). The latest KDE offers a more efficient file manager called Dolphin and desktop applets called plasmoids. GNOME has the reputation of being a more basic, business-oriented desktop. Most Linux distributions such as Slackware and Gentoo offer GNOME and KDE desktops that aren’t changed much from how they are delivered from those desktop projects. Other Linux systems (such as Fedora) put their own look-and-feel over GNOME and KDE desktops. Although the latest Windows systems won’t run on many older 486 and Pentium machines, you can use an efficient Linux system such as Slackware, add a lightweight window manager, and get reasonably good performance with your desktop system on those machines.in this part

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Playing Music and Video

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ne of the most popular and enjoyable activities on a computer is playing audio and video. With improved multimedia players and tools for storing and managing content, Linux has become a great platform for storing, playing, and managing your music and video files. In this chapter, you learn to use the sound, video, digital imaging, and other multimedia tools available for Linux. You explore the process of configuring audio and video devices, and examine the kinds of media formats available for the Linux platform, how they work, and how to make the most of them by using the right applications. Linux is an excellent platform for taking advantage of widely used formats such as MPEG, AVI, OGG, and QuickTime. A wide variety of players are available for the various formats, and this chapter discusses several of them to help you determine which might be the right one (or combination) for your interests and/or needs. Because many devices holding multimedia content are removable (CDs, DVDs, digital cameras, Webcams, and so on), recent features in Linux to automatically handle removable hardware and media have greatly improved the Linux desktop experience. See the section on managing hardware in Chapter 3 for descriptions of how features such as Udev and HAL are used to manage removable media.

NOTE

IN THIS CHAPTER Legal issues with digital media Using commercial content on Linux Playing, recording, and ripping music Setting up TV and audio cards Recording and ripping music Watching TV Videoconferencing Watching movies and videos Storing and displaying images from digital cameras

Some Linux distributions are more multimedia-friendly right after the install than others. An example of this is Freespire, which comes pre-loaded and able to support Flash, Java, and MP3 content the minute the installation completes. This can save you a great deal of time trying to track down licensing issues and resolve problems. Features that are not included with the installation, such as DVD playback support, can be found at the Click-N-Run service (www.cnr.com). Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and even the defunct Linspire users can use Click-N-Run to get both free and commercial software.

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Playing Digital Media and Obeying the Law Debate about just what an end user can legally do with digital media is a hot topic right now. What exactly can you do as far as making copies of your CDs, DVDs, and other media? Unfortunately, there is no really good answer. This issue affects just about every computer user, either directly or indirectly. How you are allowed to use the audio, video, and other media you keep on your computers is increasingly dictated by national and international law. There was a time when you could essentially disregard this issue, but in the era where individual computer users have been successfully sued by corporations and industry groups, a little more caution is required.

Copyright Protection Issues The biggest factor in the new world of digital media policy is the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This law ostensibly establishes a framework for implementing several international treaties concerning copyright protection. The DMCA has been widely criticized because it seems to intrude on the free-speech provisions of the U.S. Constitution. Many people view computer code as a protected form of speech. A conflict arises because the DMCA forbids the development of applications that are designed to intentionally circumvent content security. For example, Dmitry Sklyarov, a Russian cryptographer employed by a Russian software company, ElcomSoft, was arrested by the FBI while attending a conference in Las Vegas because he demonstrated an application that could decrypt Adobe eBooks. A jury found Sklyarov and ElcomSoft not guilty in December 2002, but the point is that companies will use the DMCA to litigate against those who publicize methods to decrypt encrypted content. If nothing else, this event demonstrated that the DMCA has teeth. Unfortunately, these teeth have been used not only to protect legitimate commerce, but to pursue computer scientists at academic institutions researching content protection schemes, encryption, and a range of other technologies. Because the DMCA makes it a crime to manufacture and transport technology used to circumvent copyright protection schemes, many researchers have abandoned valuable research that could yield better (stronger and more useful) protection schemes or reveal critical flaws in existing ones. While DCMA has provided some clout for content providers to legitimately protect their material, such as persuading search engines to drop information about links to illegally posted and copyrighted information, there are times when that clout has been abused. Some copyright holders, it seems, are more than willing to use the DMCA to curtail three “rights” allowed under pre-DMCA copyright law. Copyright law stipulates: ■

Users can make a copy of any copyrighted work for academic purposes, reporting, or critique. This includes a wide range of uses, from students or instructors copying materials for research to someone creating a parody of published materials. But what about a student making a copy of some DVD materials for a multimedia presentation? The student has fairuse access to the material on the DVD, but the DMCA makes it illegal for the student to break the DVD encryption that would allow the student to copy the material.

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The fair-use rule is a privilege that permits someone other than the owner of the copyright to use the copyrighted material in a reasonable and limited manner without the owner’s consent.

NOTE

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Users can sell copyrighted works that they own. You can sell your books, DVDs, audio CDs, and other materials as long as you are not retaining a copy for yourself, or (of course) selling copies of the work without permission from the copyright holder. Some people arguing in favor of file trading with copyrighted materials claim that the DMCA infringes on their ability to “share” content they “own.” In fact, under existing copyright law they do not “own” the copyrighted material and certainly do not possess the rights to redistribute the content unless they are reselling it in an allowed manner.

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Copyrights will expire at some time in the future and fall into the public domain. Basically, this point raises the same issue as with the first item: Your DVD movie falls into the public domain (eventually), but to freely copy the content you must again circumvent the protection inherent on the DVD, and by doing so, you run afoul of the DMCA.

It is important to realize the DMCA is very vague about how it defines many of the acts that are illegal. What is a “protection scheme”? Some argue that it could be nearly anything. Many pundits fear that the DMCA can be used to curtail the use of nondigital copyrighted works such as books because the law is so vague in defining its own borders. While the courts are trying to clarify where the legal line is in any particular situation, the problem is that, often, the company suing to protect its copyrights is a large corporation or group and the defendant is either a new small company or even an individual user. Court battles are expensive, and the broad scope of the DMCA essentially prevents “the little guy” from ever making his case, because he cannot afford to fight. In 1998 a law known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, or CTEA, was passed. This act took the already lengthy copyright protection period (generally 70 years) and extended it by another 20 years, preventing several valuable properties, including film and images of Steamboat Willie (the first Mickey Mouse), from entering the public domain.

NOTE

From a practical standpoint, what does all this mean to you as a Linux user? Well, it means that if you have to use any trickery to copy MP3s off your CD collection, you could be breaking the law. Several CD protection schemes used by record companies are designed to prevent digital piracy, but they are very easy to circumvent in many cases. But should you get caught making MP3s off a protected CD, you can be sued and/or arrested (hypothetically speaking). It is quite possible that some of the security on CDs is intentionally weak. It saves development costs and allows the copyright holder to pursue anyone who has ripped the CD because there is no legal means of doing so. But that is just speculation. Relatively few audio CDs come with protection of any kind, particularly those CDs already owned by the world’s audiophiles. If you make fair-use copies of materials you own for your own use, you’re not likely to have to worry about anything. If you should decide to transport copyrighted works in

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a public forum (peer-to-peer networks for example), you are rolling the dice. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) have both successfully located and sued users — including children — distributing content illegally online. One attempt to allow sharing, remixing, and reusing legally is the Creative Commons Project. As of this writing, the project is seven years old and thousands of items are posted. You can find more information at http://creativecommons.org/.

NOTE

Two sites worth exploring are Jamendo (www.jamendo.com/en/) and Magnatune (www.magnatune .com). Both are libraries offering free access to music. Jamendo focuses on free distribution of music to help musicians grow their audiences. Magnatune helps musicians by licensing their music to those who would like to use it in commercial ventures (such as films, commercials, Web sites, and so on), while still allowing the musicians to maintain rights to their music.

Exploring Codecs If you want to play a video or audio file, you need the appropriate codec installed and ready for use by your media player. A codec is a software-based encoder-decoder used to take existing digital audio/video data and decode the content. Often, codecs use compression technology to reduce the size of the data files while retaining the quality of the output. If you encounter a media file that you know is a working, playable file and you cannot play the file, you might need to identify and install the proper codec. This often involves installing the proper playback application, such as DivX 5.0.5 for Linux, which installs the MPEG4 codec for video and audio playback. There are many codecs available, so finding the ones you need is usually not difficult. Advances in codec technology have continued to increase the quality of the encoded content, while reducing file size. Fortunately most widely distributed videos and audio files (from news sites, for example) are created using a few commonly used codecs. While there are some commonly used encoding standards, there are also a slew of proprietary codecs in use today as well. This is really a battleground of sorts with each vendor/developer trying to produce the superior standard and obtain the spoils of market share that can follow. For the end user, this means you might have to spend time chasing a variety of playback utilities to handle multiple video and audio formats. Another debate: Can digital media match the quality of analog formats? This hardly seems much of a question anymore because DVD has shown the potential for high-quality digital video, and MPEG codecs have made huge strides in digital audio fidelity. The quality of digital media files is very high and getting better all the time. Some of the key technologies that reflect improvements in how audio and video codecs have improved include: ■

Ogg Vorbis — This audio codec has been developed as a freely available tool — no patents or licensing needed. Ogg is the “data container” portion of the codec, and Vorbis is the audio compression scheme. There are other compression schemes that can be used with Ogg such as Ogg FLAC, which is used for archiving audio in a lossless format, and Ogg Speex, which is used specifically to handle encoding speech.

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WMA — Windows Media Audio is used to create high-quality digital audio. WMA is considered a lossless codec, which means the audio doesn’t lose quality or data as a result of repeated compression-decompression cycles. Among its other benefits is that it’s one of the first widely used codecs to support digital surround sound.

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WMV — Windows Media Video is used, not surprisingly, to encode and decode video. This is also a very high-quality encoder and is billed to produce a video that is half the size of an MPEG-4 encoded video at a comparable quality level.

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DivX — This video codec has revolutionized digital video. Extremely high-quality video can be stored with amazingly small file sizes when using this codec. DivX (Digital Video Express) is based on the MPEG-4 video standard and can produce 640 × 480 video that is about 15 percent of the size of the source DVD material.

4

Some of these codecs are integral parts of Digital Rights Management (DRM) scenarios. For example, WMA, WMV, and DivX have elements that support DRM. DRM is basically proprietary copy protection. The term “DRM” applies to a wide range of technologies that use server-based activation, encryption, and other elements to control who can access content and what they can then do with the content once it has been accessed. While it is very attractive to distributors of audio and video, who are trying to prevent unchecked digital piracy of their content, it can be a real stumbling block for the consumer. Many DRM solutions require proprietary software and even hardware to work with the protected content. A prime example is the recent production of some DRM-protected audio CDs, particularly in Europe. Some of these disks will not play in older standalone CD players, some will play only on a computer that supports the DRM application on the CD itself, and (especially frustrating) some will not play on a computer at all. In almost all cases, such DRM solutions do not support Linux. Most support only Windows, and a few support Windows and Mac OS X. Just to make things clear, while the codecs just discussed do not include built-in DRM features, some codecs are specifically designed to integrate with DRM solutions. In other words, all of these codecs can theoretically be used to play encoded content on a Linux system. If the content is protected by a DRM solution, the likelihood that the content is playable on a Linux system is fairly remote. Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, Linus Torvalds has not excluded the possibility of including support for DRM in Linux. Likewise, several open source projects are working on Linux DRM solutions.

Playing Music With an understanding of the challenges and advances in digital media under your belt, let’s move on to actually putting digital media to use. This section shows you how to set up your Linux installation for audio playback. It examines the process for getting the hardware up and running and then explores available software options for audio playback.

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Using Sound Systems in Linux Several different sound systems have been used to bring audio to your Linux desktop in the past few years. Although sound systems mostly work in the background, the sound system running in Linux can impact the sound mixers and applications you can use. Here is some information related to sound support you might run into when you use Linux: ■

Open Sound System (www.opensound.com) — Open Sound System (OSS) was the first sound system for Linux and other UNIX systems to unify the sound drivers and sound application interfaces under one framework. Although it is still available for Linux, most Linux distributions no longer distribute OSS because it is now proprietary (it is owned by 4Front Technologies: www.4front-tech.com). As an individual, you can still get OSS for Linux (www.4front-tech.com/download.cgi), but most Linux users just use the ALSA or PulseAudio system that comes with your Linux distribution. Audio applications written for OSS work with both ALSA and PulseAudio sound systems.

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Advanced Linux Sound System (www.alsa-project.org) — Most Linux systems replaced OSS with the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) system for their sound driver and sound interface needs. ALSA also does a good job configuring sound drivers and handling multiple sound devices. ALSA works with both KDE and GNOME desktop systems. Recently, several major Linux distributions have switched to PulseAudio as their default sound system, while still supporting ALSA applications.

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PulseAudio (www.pulseaudio.org) — Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, and other Linux distributions have recently replaced their ALSA sound systems with PulseAudio. Besides adding some features for controlling volume for multiple sound applications and directing audio to PulseAudio servers on other systems, the PulseAudio server will work with many ALSA, aRTS, and ESD applications using plug-ins.

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KDE sound systems — With KDE 4, the default KDE sound system changed from the analog Real time synthesizer (aRts) to Phonon (http://phonon.kde.org). Although Phonon does consolidate end-user tools for controlling audio, its primary goal is to provide software developers with a multimedia application programming interface that encompasses both audio and video features.

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GNOME sound systems — GNOME supports the Enlightened Sound Daemon (ESD) as its sound server. ESD relies on the GStreamer (www.gstreamer.net) framework to handle the actual encoding and decoding of multimedia content. You can purchase legal audio and video codecs from a company called Fluendo (www.fluendo.com) that work with the GStreamer framework.

Because at least three of the major Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandriva) have moved to PulseAudio as their default sound server, the next section focuses on how to use PulseAudio sound tools from your Linux desktop.

Adjusting Sound with PulseAudio If your Linux desktop has integrated PulseAudio properly, you should be able to use it to work with most sound applications written for Linux. That means that you can not only play lots of audio

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applications from your desktop, but you can also separately control the volume for each application using the PulseAudio Volume Control. For example, from the Fedora GNOME desktop, select Applications ➪ Sound & Video ➪ PulseAudio Volume Control. A window similar to the one shown in Figure 4-1 appears.

FIGURE 4-1 Control volume levels for multiple audio players with PulseAudio.

As audio applications are started, they appear in the Playback tab on the PulseAudio Volume Control window. As an example, for Figure 4-1, I opened Rhythmbox to play some music in the background (I moved the sliders to lower the volume), and then opened an XMMS audio player to play a streaming audio lecture, which also showed up on the volume control. If you have multiple audio input and output devices, you can configure volume levels from those devices individually, using the Input Devices and Output Devices tabs. By right-clicking your mouse on an input or output device, you can make that your default audio device. Most of the work to configure the plug-ins and devices needed to get your Linux audio applications working should have be set up automatically when you installed your Linux system. However, if you are not able to play some audio application, refer to the PulseAudio Perfect Setup page (www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/PerfectSetup). It describes how to configure dozens of GNOME, KDE, OSS, ESOUND, GStreamer, Flash, and other sound applications to work with PulseAudio. If you are using a Linux system that doesn’t have PulseAudio installed, there are other applications you can use to adjust audio levels. The aumix command has a simple way to adjust audio, using command options or a screen-oriented menu. The alsamixer command lets you adjust audio levels for ALSA audio devices.

NOTE

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Setting Up Audio Cards To start your “quadraphonic wall of sound,” you need to have a sound card in your PC. A sound card can be an add-in PCI (or even ISA) card, or it can be integrated on your motherboard. Your card will have a ton of uses — from gaming to audio/video playback. Having a multimedia system just isn’t the same without sound. Fortunately, most modern PCs include a sound card, often of the integrated variety. In the rare case that one isn’t included (or the slightly more common case where it isn’t supported in Linux), you can add a supported sound card starting for only a few dollars. If you’re really pinched, check out eBay, where you probably can get a decent SoundBlaster-compatible card (still the standard) for next to nothing. If you try the procedures in this book but still don’t have a working sound card, visit www.alsa-project.org, home of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA). Another good resource is the ALSA wiki (http://alsa.opensrc.org).

NOTE

The following list summarizes the basic features that are included in the popular SoundBlaster family of sound cards: ■

Sound recording and playback — The card can convert analog sound into 8-bit or 16-bit digital numbers. To convert the sound, the board samples the sound in waves from 5 KHz to 48 KHz, or 5,000 to 48,100 times per second. The higher the sampling rate, the better the sound and the larger the output files.

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Full-duplex support — Full-duplex means that recording and playback occur at the same time. This is particularly useful for bidirectional Internet communication, such as VoiceOver-IP (VOIP) telephony or simultaneous recording and playback.

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Input/output ports — Several different ports on the board enable you to connect other input/output devices. These ports include: ■

Line-In (blue) — Connects an external CD player, cassette deck, synthesizer, MiniDisc, or other device for recording or playback. If you have a television card, you might also patch that card’s line out to your sound card’s line in.

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Microphone (red) — Connects a microphone for audio recording or communications.

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Headphone/Line-Out/Speaker Out (green) — Connects speakers, headphones, or a stereo amplifier. (On sound cards I’ve tested, this is marked as Headphone in mixer utilities.)

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Joystick/MIDI (15-pin connector) — Connects a joystick for gaming or MIDI devices. (Some sound cards no longer have these ports because they are now available from most motherboards.)

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Digital out (orange) — A digital out connector can be used to connect a digital audio tape (DAT) device or CD recordable (CD-R) device.

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Rear out (black) — Can be used to deliver audio output to powered speakers or an external amplifier.

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Internal CD Audio — This internal port connects the sound card to your computer’s internal CD-ROM drive (this port isn’t exposed when the board is installed).

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Sound drivers provided in Linux come from many sources. Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) sound drivers are integrated into the 2.6 kernel. You may find older Open Sound System (OSS) drivers are useful if ALSA does not support your sound card. Commercial support for OSS drivers is available for a small cost from 4Front Technologies (www.opensound.com), which is the company that still maintains OSS. Before you install a separate sound driver distribution, check to see if your current distribution already has a recent driver. Using the driver that came with the kernel is always a safe bet if you are not experiencing a specific driver-related issue.

CAUTION

At times, a sound application will ask you to identify the device from which to access sound on your system. With the introduction of the Udev feature in the 2.6 kernel, some of the device names are different from those used with the 2.4 kernel. The following are audio device nodes that may be of interest to you as you use sound in Linux: ■

/dev/audio, /dev/audio1 — Compatible with Sun workstation audio implementations (audio files with the .au extension). These devices are not recommended for new sound

applications. ■

/dev/cdrom — Represents your first CD-ROM drive. /dev/cdrom is usually a symbolic link to the device node, such as /dev/hdc, that corresponds to your CD-ROM drive. Additional CD-ROM drives are located at /dev/cdrom1, /dev/cdrom2, and so on.

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/dev/dsp, /dev/dsp1 — Digital sampling devices, which many audio applications identify to access your sound card.

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/dev/mixer, /dev/mixer1 — Sound-mixing devices.

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/dev/sequencer — Provides a low-level interface to MIDI, FM, and GUS.

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/dev/midi00 — Provides raw access to MIDI ports, if they are available.

For general information about sound in Linux, see the Sound-HOWTO (for tips about sound cards and general sound issues) and the Sound-Playing-HOWTO (for tips on software for playing different types of audio files). You can find Linux HOWTOs at www.tldp.org.

Choosing an Audio CD Player Rhythmbox is the default CD player for many GNOME desktop systems. However, a variety of CD players come with Linux distributions or may be downloaded and installed. Here is a cross-section of choices for playing CDs with Linux: ■

Rhythmbox (rhythmbox) — Import and manage your CD collection with Rhythmbox music management and playback software for GNOME. It uses GStreamer on the audio back end and can rip and compress music using Ogg Vorbis or other audio formats. In addition to enabling you to create playlists of your music library, Rhythmbox also has features for playing Internet radio stations. Free music stores were added to Rhythmbox in recent releases, allowing you to play free music from Jamendo (www.jamendo.com/en/) and Magnatune (www.magnatune.com), and possibly purchase CDs or license use of that music for commercial projects.

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KsCD player (kscd) — The KsCD player comes with the KDE desktop. To use it, the kdemultimedia package must be installed. From the main menu on the KDE desktop, select Multimedia ➪ KsCD (or type kscd in a Terminal window). This player lets you get title, track, and artist information from the CD database. KsCD also lets you submit information to a CD database (if your CD isn’t found there).

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Grip (grip) — While Grip is primarily used as a CD ripper, it can also play CDs. Select Multimedia ➪ Grip (or type grip in a Terminal window). It includes tools for gathering data from and submitting data to CD databases. It also includes tools for copying (ripping) CD tracks and converting them to different formats (encoding). Naturally, the grip package must be installed to use this command.

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Amarok (amarok) — With Amarok, you get a nice graphical interface where you can manage music by moving elements around with your mouse. Amarok uses SQLite (or other databases) to store your music. It also supports playlists and streaming audio playback from online radio stations.

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X Multimedia System (xmms) — The XMMS player plays a variety of audio formats but can also play directly from a CD.

Playing Music with the Rhythmbox Audio Player Rhythmbox provides the GNOME music player that lets you play music from a CD, local file system, or network location. Rhythmbox is built on the GStreamer framework for developing media players, video editors, and streaming media. You can play music files, import music from CDs, and play Internet radio stations, all from one interface. Recent additions let you play podcasts and free music from Magnatune and Jamendo online music services. Plug-ins for Rhythmbox let you display album covers, view lyrics, or show visual effects with the music. The first time you run Rhythmbox, consider setting some Rhythmbox Preferences by selecting Edit Preferences (see Figure 4-2). On the Music tab, you can tell Rhythmbox where you store your music files, and how Rhythmbox should organize and store your music (including how folders are named, songs are titled, and the format in which music is stored). After you’ve set up your preferences, you’ll see the main music library interface (see Figure 4-3). Rhythmbox makes it easy to organize even large collections of music files. If your distribution does not include support for MP3 playback with Rhythmbox, fear not — there is hope! In Fedora, you can use the Codeina feature to download free MP3 decoder support from Fluendo (www.fluendo.com). For Ubuntu, Freespire, and legacy Linspire Linux distributions, check out support in the Click-N-Run service (www.cnr.com). In addition to playing music files, Rhythmbox can easily rip CDs. Just insert the CD you want to rip, right-click the CD when it appears under the Devices heading in the left column, and click the Extract icon on the toolbar. The CD will be ripped and stored with your Rhythmbox music collection folder.

NOTE

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FIGURE 4-2 Defining where you store your music

FIGURE 4-3 Viewing a music library with Rhythmbox

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Rhythmbox can also play Internet radio stations and podcasts. Without adding more codecs, you can play Ogg Vorbis Internet radio audio streams. There are many more streams available in MP3 format, however. To add an Internet radio station to Rhythmbox, select Radio in the left column and click the New icon. Fill in the Title and Genre of the station. Then open the Details tab and type in the location of the stream (such as http://wknc.org:8000/wkncmq.ogg.m3u). Adding Podcasts can be done the same way. Select Podcasts in the left column and then select New. Type the URL for the podcast feed (for example, www.geeknewscentral.com/podcast.xml) into the pop-up that appears. To add an image to your podcast, just download an appropriate image to your computer and drag-and-drop it onto the lower-left corner of the Rhythmbox window while your Podcast is selected. Figure 4-4 shows Rhythmbox playing the Geek News Central podcast.

FIGURE 4-4 Rhythmbox playing a podcast feed

TIP

The site www.di.fm lists a number of free Internet radio channels.

Playing Music with the XMMS Multimedia Player The XMMS (X Multimedia System) multimedia player provides a compact, graphical interface for playing music files in MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, and other audio formats. XMMS has some nice extras too, including an equalizer, a playlist editor, and the capability to add more audio plug-ins. One of its greatest attributes is that XMMS is easy to use. If the player looks familiar to you, that’s because it is styled after the Windows Winamp program.

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To add XMMS to your Fedora system, type yum install xmms* as the root user. This will get you the player and some nice skins to use with it as well. To play MP3 audio with XMMS, you need to add the MPEG Layer 1/2/3 Player plug-in. In Fedora, you can get the xmms-mp3 package from the http://rpm.livna.org repository. Start the XMMS audio player by selecting Sound & Video ➪ Audio Player or by typing xmms from a Terminal window. Figure 4-5 shows the XMMS audio player with the associated equalizer (lower left) and the Playlist Editor (to the right). The skin that I selected for this figure (by right-clicking XMMS and selecting Options ➪ Skin Browser) is called UltrafinaSE.

FIGURE 4-5 Play Ogg Vorbis and other audio files from the XMMS playlist.

As noted earlier, you can play several audio file formats. Supported formats include: ■

MP3 (with an added plug-in)

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Ogg Vorbis

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WAV

■

AU

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CD audio

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CIN movies

NOTE

If XMMS is not able to find a configured sound card, it redirects its output to the Disk Writer plug-in. This causes the files you play to be written to hard disk as WAV files.

You can get many more audio plug-ins from www.xmms.org. The XMMS audio player can be used in the following way: 1. Obtain music files by ripping songs from a CD or copying them from the Web so that they are in an accessible directory, or by inserting a music CD in your CD-ROM drive. (XMMS expects the CD to be accessible from /dev/cdrom.) 2. From the Applications menu, select Sound & Video ➪ Audio Player. The X Multimedia System player appears.

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3. Click the Eject button. The Load files window appears. 4. If you have inserted a CD, the contents of /mnt/cdrom appear in the Files pane. Select the files you want to add to your Playlist and click the Add Selected Files or the Add All Files in Directory button to add all songs from the current directory. To add audio files from your file system, browse your files and directories and click the same buttons to add the audio files you want. Select Close. 5. Click the Play List button (the tiny button marked PL) on the console. A Playlist Editor window appears. 6. Double-click the music file, and it starts to play. 7. With a file selected and playing, here are a few actions you can take: ■

Control play — Buttons for controlling play are what you would expect to see on a standalone CD player. From left to right, the buttons let you go to a previous track, play, pause, stop, go to the next track, and eject the CD. The eject button opens a window, enabling you to load the next file.

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Adjust sound — Use the left slider bar to adjust the volume. Use the right slider bar to change the right-to-left balance.

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Display time — Click in the elapsed time area to toggle between elapsed time and time remaining.

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View file information — Click the button in the upper-left corner of the screen to see the XMMS menu. Then select View File Info. You can often find out a lot of information about the file: title, artist, album, comments, and genre. For an Ogg Vorbis file, you can see specific information about the file itself, such as the format, bit rate, sample rate, frames, file size, and more. You can change or add to the tag information and click Save to keep it.

8. When you are done playing music, click the Stop button to stop the current song. Then click the X in the upper-right corner of the display to close the window.

Special features of the XMMS audio player let you adjust frequencies using a graphic equalizer and gather and play songs using a Playlist Editor. Click the button marked EQ next to the balance bar on the player to open the Equalizer.

Using the Equalizer The Equalizer lets you use slider bars to set different levels to different frequencies played. Bars on the left adjust lower frequencies, and those on the right adjust higher frequencies. Click the EQ button to open the Equalizer window. Here are tasks you can perform with the Equalizer: ■

If you like the settings you have for a particular song, you can save them as a Preset. Set each frequency as you like it and click the Preset button. Then choose Save ➪ Preset. Type a name for the preset and click OK.

■

To reload a preset you created earlier, click the Preset button and select Load ➪ Preset. Select the preset you want and click OK.

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The small window in the center/top of the Equalizer shows the sound wave formed by your settings. You can adjust the Preamp bar on the left to boost different levels in the set range.

Using the Playlist Editor The Playlist Editor lets you put together a list of audio files that you want to play. You can add and delete files from this list, save them to a file, and use them again later. Click the PL button in the XMMS window to open the Playlist Editor. The Playlist Editor enables you to: ■

Add files to the playlist — Click the Add button. The Load Files window appears. Select the directory containing your audio files (it’s useful to keep them all in one place) from the left column. Then either select a file from the right column and click Add Selected Files or click Add All Files in the Directory. Click OK. The selected files appear in the playlist. You can also add music files by dragging them from the Nautilus file manager onto the playlist window.

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Select files to play — To select from the files in the playlist, use the previous track and next track buttons in the main XMMS window. The selected file is highlighted. Click the Play button to play that file. Alternatively, you can double-click any file in the playlist to start it playing.

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Delete files from the playlist — To remove files from the playlist, select the file or files you want to remove (use the next track and previous track buttons), right-click the playlist window, and click Remove ➪ Selected. The selected files are removed.

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Save the playlist — To save the current playlist, hold the right mouse button down on the List button and then select Playlist ➪ Save List from the pop-up menu. Browse to the directory you want, and then type the name you want to assign to the playlist and click OK. The filename should end with a .m3u extension, such as monkees_hits.m3u.

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Load the playlist — To reload a saved playlist, click the List button. Select a playlist from the directory in which you saved it and click OK.

There is also a tiny set of buttons on the bottom of the Playlist Editor screen. These are the same buttons as those on the main screen used for selecting different tracks or playing, pausing, stopping, or ejecting the current track. One of the most fun aspects to XMMS is that you can change the skin, or the look, of the user interface. XMMS skins allow you to see wildly different interfaces, even though the application remains the same. Not only can you control the look of XMMS, you can also use skins to adjust for any issues in the XMMS interface. For example, the current song in the playlist window may not be highlighted enough, especially if you have a high-resolution monitor. You can select a skin that provides better highlighting. You can also choose skins that make XMMS look like Winamp on Windows, or like the Mac OS X interface.

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You can select and download more XMMS skins from www.xmms.org/skins.php. In addition, XMMS supports Windows Winamp skins (files with a .wsz extension), so you can download those skins and see your favorite musician or animated characters for your music player. Just download and copy the skin to your /usr/share/xmms/Skins directory to add it to your skins list.

Using MIDI Audio Players MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) files are created from synthesizers and other electronic music devices. They tend to be smaller than other kinds of audio files because instead of storing the complete sounds, they contain information about the notes played, tempo, and articulation. You can think of a MIDI file as electronic sheet music. The MIDI player reproduces the notes to sound like a huge variety of MIDI instruments. There are lots of sites on the Internet for downloading MIDI files. Try the Ifni MIDI Music site (www.ifnimidi.com), for example, which contains songs by the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and others organized by album. Most of the MIDI music is pretty simple, but you can have some fun playing with it. Linux distributions that include the KDE desktop (such as Fedora) often come with the kmid MIDI player. Kmid provides a GUI interface for midi music, including the capability to display karaoke lyrics in real time. To start kmid in Fedora, select Sound & Video ➪ KMid (or type kmid & from a Terminal window).

Performing Audio File Conversion and Compression There are many different formats for storing and compressing speech and music files. Because music files can be large, they are usually stored in a compressed format. While MP3 has been the compression format of choice, Ogg Vorbis is quickly becoming the favorite for compressing music in the open source community. Ogg Vorbis has the added benefit of not being encumbered by patents as MP3 is. Linux tools for converting and compressing audio files include: ■

SoX (Sound eXchange) — A general-purpose tool for converting audio files among a variety of formats.

■

oggenc — A tool for specifically converting music files to Ogg Vorbis format.

Converting Audio Files with SoX If you have a sound file in one format, but you want it to be in another format, Linux offers some conversion tools. The SoX utility can translate to and from any of the audio formats listed in Table 4-1.

TIP

Type sox -h to see the supported audio types, as well as supported options and effects.

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TABLE 4-1

Sound Formats Supported by the SoX Utility File Extension or Pseudonym

Description

File Extension or Pseudonym

Description

.8svx

8SVX Amiga musical instrument description format.

.aiff

Apple IIc/IIgs and SGI AIFF files. May require a separate archiver to work with these files.

.au, .snd

Sun Microsystems AU audio files. This was once a popular format. (The .snd extension is ambiguous because it’s also been used on the NeXT format and the headerless Mac/PC format.)

.avr

Audio Visual Research format, used on the Mac.

.cdr

CD-R files used to master compact disks.

.cvs

Continuously variable slope delta modulation, which is used for voice mail and other speech compression.

.dat

Text data files, which contain a text representation of sound data.

.gsm

Lossy speech compression (GSM 06.10), used to shrink audio data in voice mail and similar applications.

.hcom

Macintosh HCOM files.

.maud

Amiga format used to produce sound that is 8-bit linear, 16-bit linear, A-law, and u-law in mono or stereo.

.ogg

Ogg Vorbis compressed audio, which is best used for compressing music and streaming audio.

.ossdsp

Pseudo file, used to open the OSS /dev/dsp file and configure it to use the data type passed to SoX. Used to either play or record.

.prc

Psion record.app format, newer than the WVE format. Note that the .prc extension is also used for programs for Palm handheld devices.

.sf

IRCAM sound files, used by the CSound package and the MixView sample editor.

.sph

Speech audio SPHERE (Speech Header Resources) format from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

.smp

SampleVision files from Turtle Beach, used to communicate with different MIDI samplers.

continued

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TABLE 4-1

(continued)

File Extension or Pseudonym

Description

File Extension or Pseudonym

Description

.sunau

Pseudo file, used to open a /dev/audio file and set it to use the data type being passed to SoX.

.txw

Yamaha TX-16W from a Yamaha sampling keyboard.

.vms

Used to compress speech audio for voice mail and similar applications.

.voc

Sound Blaster VOC file.

.wav

Microsoft WAV RIFF files. This is the native Microsoft Windows sound format.

.wve

8-bit, a-law, and 8 KHz sound files used with Psion Palmtop computers.

.raw

Raw files (contain no header information, so sample rate, size, and style must be given).

.ub, .sb, .uw, .sw, .ul, .al, .lu, .la, .sl

Raw files with set characteristics. ub is an unsigned byte; sb is a signed byte; uw is an unsigned word; sw is a signed word; and ul is ulaw.

If you are not sure about the format of an audio file, you can add the .auto extension to the filename. This triggers SoX to guess what kind of audio format is contained in the file. The .auto extension can be used only for the input file. If SoX can figure out the content of the input file, it translates the contents to the sound type for the output file you request. In its most basic form, you can convert one file format (such as a WAV file) to another format (such as an AU file) as follows: $ sox file1.wav file1.au

To see what SoX is doing, use the -V option. For example: $ sox -V file1.wav file1.voc sox: Reading Wave file: Microsoft PCM format, 2 channel, 44100 samp/sec sox: 176400 byte/sec, 4 block align, 16 bits/samp, 50266944 data bytes sox: Input file: using sample rate 11025 size bytes, style unsigned, 1 channel sox: Input file1.wav: comment “file1.wav” sox: Output file1.voc: using sample rate 44100 size shorts, encoding signed (2’s complement), 2 channels sox: Output file: comment “file1.wav”

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You can apply sound effects during the SoX conversion process. The following example shows how to change the sample rate (using the -r option) from 10,000 KHz to 5,000 KHz: $ sox -r 10000 file1.wav -r 5000 file1.voc

To reduce the noise, you can send the file through a low-pass filter. Here’s an example: $ sox file1.voc file2.voc lowp 2200

For more information on SoX and to get the latest download, go to the SoX — Sound eXchange — home page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/).

Compressing Music Files with oggenc The oggenc command takes music or other audio data and converts it from uncompressed formats (such as WAV, RAW, or AIFF) to the compressed Ogg Vorbis format. Using Ogg Vorbis, audio files can be significantly reduced in size without a noticeable loss of sound quality. (I used the default settings in oggenc and reduced a 48MB WAV music file to 4MB.) In its most basic form, you can use oggenc with one or more WAV or AIFF files following it. For example: $ oggenc *.wav

This command would result in all files ending with .wav in the current directory to be converted to Ogg Vorbis format. An OGG file is produced for each WAV file, with oggenc substituting .ogg for .wav as the file suffix for the compressed file. Ogg Vorbis files can be played in many different audio players in Linux, including the XMMS player (described earlier). In addition, a number of handheld music players support Ogg Vorbis formats. These include a number of iRiver, Jens of Sweden, MobiBLU, Neuros, and Samsung models. Verify with your product’s manual, however, as models and player firmware change often. If you want to rip music files from a CD and compress them, you can use the Grip window (described later in this chapter). Grip enables you to select oggenc as the tool to do the file compression.

TIP

If you are interested in making a CD jukebox that rips, records, and compresses music CDs using oggenc and other open source software, check out Linux Toys by Christopher Negus and Chuck Wolber from Wiley Publishing (2003).

Recording and Ripping Music A writable CD-ROM drive is a standard device on computers. Where once you had to settle for a floppy disk (1.44MB) or a Zip disk (100MB) to store personal data, a CD-ROM burner lets you store more than 600MB of data in a format that can be exchanged with most computers. On top of that, you can create CD music disks!

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Both graphical and command-line tools exist for creating audio and data CDs on Linux. The cdrecord command enables you to create audio and data CDs from the command line, writing to CD-recordable (CD-R) and CD-rewritable (CD-RW) drives. This command is discussed in the following section.

Creating an Audio CD with cdrecord You can use the cdrecord command to create either data or music CDs. You can create a data CD by setting up a separate file system and copying the whole image of that file system to CD. Creating an audio CD consists of selecting the audio tracks you want to copy and copying them all at once to the CD. This section focuses on using cdrecord to create audio CDs. cdrecord can use audio files in .au, .wav, and .cdr formats, automatically translating them when necessary. If you have audio files in other formats, you can convert them to one of the supported formats by using the sox command (described previously in this chapter). One way to create an audio CD is to use cdda2wav to extract (copy) the music tracks to a directory and then use cdrecord to write them from the directory to the CD. Here’s an example: If you prefer a graphical tool for copying and burning CDs and DVDs, refer to Appendix A, which describes how to use the K3B CD/DVD Burning Facility for burning CD images. That tool can also be used for copying audio CDs.

NOTE

1. Create a directory to hold the audio files, and change to that directory. (Make sure the directory can hold up to 660MB of data — less if you are burning fewer songs.) For example: # mkdir /tmp/cd # cd /tmp/cd

2. Insert the music CD into your CD-ROM drive. (If a CD player opens on the desktop, close it.) 3. Extract the music tracks you want by using the cdda2wav command. For example: # cdda2wav -D /dev/cdrom -B

This reads all of the music tracks from the CD-ROM drive. The -B option says to output each track to a separate file. By default, the cdda2wav command outputs the files to the WAV audio format. Instead of extracting all songs, you can choose a single track or a range of tracks to extract. For example, to extract tracks 3 through 5, add the -t3+5 option. To extract just track 9, add -t9+9. To extract track 7 through the end of the CD, add -t7.

NOTE

If you have a low-quality CD drive or an imperfect CD, cdda2wav might not be the best ripping tool. You might try cdparanoia -B to extract songs from the CD to hard disk instead.

4. When cdda2wav is done, insert a blank CD into your writable CD drive.

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5. Use the cdrecord command to write the music tracks to the CD. For example: # cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio *.wav

The options to cdrecord tell the command to create an audio CD (-audio) on the writable CD device located at /dev/cdrom. The cdrecord command writes all .wav files from the current directory. The -v option causes verbose output. 6. If you want to change the order of the tracks, you can type their names in the order you want them written (instead of using *.wav). If your CD writer supports higher speeds, you can use the speed option to double (speed=2) or to quadruple (speed=4) the writing speed.

After you have created the music CD, indicate the contents of the CD on its label side. It’s now ready to play on any standard music CD player.

Ripping CDs with Grip The Grip application (grip package) provides a more graphical method of copying music from CDs to your hard disk so that you can play the songs directly from your hard disk or burn them back onto a blank CD. Besides just ripping music, you can also compress each song as you extract it from the CD. You can open Grip from the GNOME desktop Applications menu in Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux systems by selecting Sound & Video ➪ Grip (or by typing grip from a Terminal window). Figure 4-6 shows an example of the Grip window.

FIGURE 4-6 Rip and play songs from the Grip window.

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To rip audio tracks from a CD with grip, do the following: 1. With the Grip window open, insert a music CD into your CD drive. If you have an active connection to the Internet and the CD is known to the CD database, the title, artist, and track information appear in the window. 2. Click each track that you want to rip (that is, copy to your hard disk). A check mark appears in that track’s Rip column. 3. Click the Config tab at the top of the page, and then select Encode. 4. You can choose the type of encoder used to compress the music by clicking the Encoder box and selecting an encoder (by default, oggenc compresses files in Ogg Vorbis, assuming that Ogg Vorbis was installed on your Linux distribution). If you have the lame package installed (available from non-free repositories for some Linux distributions), you can encode your music to MP3 format. 5. Click the Rip tab at the top of the page. From the Ripper subtab, indicate the location and format of the ripped files (I use ~/Music/%x/%A/%d/%n.wav to hold the ripped WAV files in subdirectories of my Music folder.) 6. Click one of the following: ■

Rip+Encode — This rips the selected songs and (if you left in the default oggenc compression in Step 4) compresses them in Ogg Vorbis format. You need an Ogg Vorbis player to play the songs after they have been ripped in this format (there are many Ogg Vorbis players for Linux).

■

Rip only — This rips the selected songs in WAV format. You can use a standard CD player to play these songs. (When I tried this, the same song ripped in WAV was 12 times larger than the Ogg Vorbis file.)

Songs are copied to the hard disk in the format you selected. By default, the files are copied into a subdirectory of $HOME/ogg (such as /home/jake/ogg). The subdirectory is named for the artist and CD. For example, if the user jake were ripping the song called “High Life” by the artist Mumbo, the directory containing ripped songs would be /home/jake/ogg/ mumbo/high_life. Each song file is named for the song (for example, fly_fly_fly.wav). Following the earlier example, I would use /home/jake/Music to hold the ripped music, instead of the default ogg directory. 7. Now you can play any of the files using a player that can play WAV or Ogg files, such as XMMS. Or you can copy the files to a CD using cdrecord. Because the filenames are the song names, they don’t appear in the same order as they appear on the CD, so if you want to copy them back to a writable CD in their original order, you may have to type each filename on the cdrecord command line. For example: # cdrecord -v dev=/dev/cdrom -audio fly_fly.wav big_news.wav about_time.wav

The Grip window can also be used to play CDs. Use the buttons on the bottom of the display to play or pause, skip ahead or back, stop, and eject the CD. The toggle track display button lets you shrink the size of the display so it takes up less space on the desktop. Click toggle disc editor to see and change title, artist, and track information.

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Creating CD Labels with cdlabelgen The cdlabelgen command can be used to create tray cards and front cards to fit in CD jewel cases. You gather information about the CD and cdlabelgen produces a PostScript output file that you can send to the printer. The cdlabelgen package also comes with graphics (in /usr/share/ cdlabelgen) that you can incorporate into your labels. Here’s an example of a cdlabelgen command line that generates a CD label file in PostScript format (type it all on one line or use backslashes, as shown, to put it on multiple lines): $ cdlabelgen -c cdlabelgen -c “20th Century Collection” \ -s “Jon Negus” \ -i “Heart of Mine%20th Century Man%Swing, Swing, Swing%I \ write the songs%Oh Mistress Mine%Turns%Winter Solstice” \ -o cover.ps

In this example, -c “20th Century Collection” identifies the title of the CD and -s “Jon Negus” indicates the artist. The tracks are entered after the -i option, with each line separated by a % sign. The output file is sent to the file cover.ps with the -o option. To view and print the results, use the evince command like this: $ evince cover.ps

The result of this example is shown in Figure 4-7.

FIGURE 4-7 Generate CD jewel case labels with cdlabelgen and print them with evince.

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You’ll want to edit the cdlabelgen command line to include the title and song names for the CD label and rerun the program a few times to get the label correct. When you are ready to print the label, click Print All.

Working with TV, Video, and Digital Imaging Getting TV cards, Webcams, and other video devices to play in Linux is still a bit of an adventure. Most manufacturers of TV cards and Webcams are not losing sleep to produce Linux drivers. As a result, most of the drivers that bring video to your Linux desktop have been reverse-engineered (that is, they were created by software engineers who watched what the video device sent and received, rather than seeing the actual code that runs the device). The first and probably biggest trick is to get a TV card or Webcam that is supported in Linux. Once you are getting video output from that device (typically available from /dev/video0), you can try out a couple of applications to begin using it. This section explores the tvtime program for watching television and the Ekiga program for video conferencing.

Watching TV with tvtime The tvtime program (tvtime command) enables you to display video output — television channels, in particular — on your desktop. You can change the channels, adjust the volume, and finetune your picture. In addition, tvtime sports a slick onscreen display and support for a widescreen display. The following sections describe how to choose a TV capture card and use tvtime to watch television on your desktop.

Getting a Supported TV Card Video4Linux (V4l/V4l2) is the video interface available for Linux. It supports a variety of TV capture cards and cameras, and is included in some distributions. If your distribution does not include V4l or V4L2, you can install it on your own, although it is not the easiest task to accomplish. For more information about obtaining and installing V4l and the appropriate driver, visit http:// linuxtv.org/v4lwiki/index.html. The MythTV project offers insight into TV cards for Linux (www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Video_capture_card). Video4Linux is designed to autodetect your TV capture card and load the proper modules to activate it. Install the TV-card hardware (with the appropriate connection to your TV reception), boot Linux, and run the tvtime command as described in the next section. You should see video displayed in your tvtime window.

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If your card doesn’t appear to be working, here are a few things you can try: ■

Check that your TV card was properly seated in its slot and detected by Linux by typing: $ /sbin/lspci | grep -i video 00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)

This shows you a list of all valid PCI cards on your computer and displays any containing the word video. If your card doesn’t show up, you probably have a hardware problem. ■

It is possible that the card is there but that the right card type is not being detected. Improper detection is most likely if you have a card for which there are several revisions, with each requiring a different driver. If you think your card is not being properly detected, find your card in the CARDLIST files. Then add the appropriate line to the /etc/modprobe.conf file. For example, to add a Prolink PV-BT878P, revision 9B card, add the following line to the file: options

bttv

card=72

One possible reason that you don’t see any video when you try to run tvtime or other video applications is that some other person or video application already has the video driver open. Only one application can use the video driver at a time. Another quirk of video4linux is that the first person to open the device on your system becomes the owner. So you might need to open the permissions of the driver to allow people other than the first person to use it to access the video4linux driver.

Running tvtime To start up the tvtime viewer, simply select TVtime Television Viewer from the Sound & Video or Multimedia menu (depending on your Linux distribution), or type the following from a Terminal window on your desktop: $ tvtime &

A video screen should appear in a window on the desktop. Click on the window to see a list of stations. Right-click to see the onscreen Setup menu. Here are a few things you can now do with your tvtime onscreen display: ■

Configure input — Change the video source, choose the television standard (which defaults to NTSC for the U.S.), and change the resolution of the input.

■

Set up the picture — Adjust the brightness, contrast, color, and hue.

■

Adjust the video processing — Control the attempted frame rate, configure the deinterlacer, or add an input filter.

■

Adjust output — Control the aspect ratio (for 16:9 output, for example), apply a matte, or set the overscan mode.

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Video Conferencing with Ekiga The Ekiga window lets you communicate with other people over a network through video, audio, and typed messages. Because Ekiga supports the H323 protocol (a standard for multimedia communications), you can use it to communicate with people using other popular videoconferencing clients, such as Microsoft NetMeeting (not including the whiteboard features), Cu-SeeMe, and Intel VideoPhone. To be able to send video, you need a Webcam supported in Linux — you’ll find a few dozen models from which to choose. The following sections show you how to set up your Webcam and use Ekiga for videoconferencing.

NOTE

Ekiga was previously known as GnomeMeeting. Both names may be in use on any given Linux platform.

Getting a Supported Webcam As with support for TV capture cards, Webcam that is support is provided through the video4linux interface. To see if your Webcam is supported, check the /usr/src/linux*/Documentation directory. A few parallel-port video cameras are described in the video4linux subdirectory; however, the bulk of the supported cameras are listed in the usb directory. After doing some research, I purchased a Logitech QuickCam Pro 3000. The driver for this Webcam was made for a Philips USB Webcam, but it also works for Webcams from Logitech, Samsung, Creative Labs, and Askey. The pwc driver needed to use these cameras is available with most popular Linux distributions.

TIP

Supported USB cameras should be autodetected, so that when you plug them in, the necessary modules are loaded automatically. Just start up Ekiga (ekiga command), and you should see video from your Webcam on your Linux desktop. You can check to see that your Webcam is working properly by typing the following: # lsmod pwc videodev compat_ioctl32

79588 30208 59072

0 3 2

pwc,tuner,bttv pwc,bttv

The output from lsmod shows that the pwc driver is loaded and associated with the videodev module and compat_ioctl32 module.

Opening Your Firewall for Ekiga You need to open a variety of ports in your firewall to use Ekiga. In particular, you need to open TCP port 1720 and TCP port range 30000 to 30010. For UDP ports, you must open ports 5000 through 5007 and ports 5010 through 5013. Examples of exact iptables settings you can use to open these ports are contained in the Ekiga FAQ (www.ekiga.org/faq).

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Running Ekiga To start Ekiga in most distributions, select Applications ➪ Internet ➪ IP Telephony, VoIP and Video Conferencing. To start Ekiga from a Terminal window, type ekiga &. If it is not installed, you can get the package for your Linux distribution when you install the GNOME desktop. The first time you run Ekiga, the Ekiga Configuration Assistant starts, enabling you to enter the following information: ■

Personal Data — Your first name, last name, e-mail address, comment, and location. You can also choose whether you want to be listed in the Ekiga ILS directory.

■

Connection Type — Indicate the speed of your Internet connection (56K modem, ISDN, DSL/Cable, T1/LAN, or Custom).

Once you have entered the data, the Ekiga window opens. Figure 4-8 shows the Ekiga window with the address book to the right. Select Tools ➪ Address Book to open your GNOME address book. This is the same address book you use for e-mail and other address and telephone information in GNOME. Add ILS servers and friends to that window, and then select the user or server you want to contact and click Contact ➪ Call Contact. Use the tabs beneath the video window to adjust your audio levels and video appearance. The History tab shows a log of your activities.

FIGURE 4-8 Connect to ILS servers to videoconference with Ekiga.

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Watching Movies and Video Although several fairly high-quality video players are available for Linux, it is rare to see the players included in formal distributions because of legal complications. The issues surrounding the playing of encoded DVD movies in Linux might be responsible for keeping players such as the MPlayer (freshmeat.net/mplayer), Ogle (www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd), and xine (http:// xinehq.de/) video players out of common distributions. By most accounts, however, you can get and use these video players to play a variety of video content for personal use as long as you don’t download and use the DeCCS (software for decrypting DVD movies). The following sections provide descriptions of some commonly used video players.

Watching Video with xine The xine player is an excellent application for playing a variety of video and audio formats. You can get xine from xine.sourceforge.net or from software repositories associated with your Linux distribution. For Fedora, xine is in the rpm.livna.org repository (yum install xine). For Ubuntu, you can get xine from non-free repositories (sudo apt-get install xine*). You can start the xine player by typing xine& from a Terminal window. Figure 4-9 shows an example of the xine video player window and controls.

FIGURE 4-9 Play DVDs, video CDs, MP3s, QuickTime, and other video formats with xine.

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NOTE

4

When you try to install xine, it tells you if you need any additional packages. If your xine player fails to start, see the “Xine Tips” section later in this chapter.

Xine supports a bunch of video and audio formats, including: ■

MPEG (1, 2, and 4)

■

QuickTime (see “Xine Tips” if your QuickTime content won’t play)

■

WMV

■

DVDs, CDs, and VCDs

■

Motion JPEG

■

MPEG audio (MP3)

■

AC3 and Dolby Digital audio

■

DTS audio

■

Commercial movies (the libdvdcss package is required)

■

Ogg Vorbis audio

Xine understands different file formats that represent a combination of audio and video, including .mpg (MPEG program streams), .ts (MPEG transport streams), .mpv (raw MPEG audio/video streams), .avi (MS AVI format), and .asf (Advanced Systems Format). While xine can play video CDs and DVDs, it can’t play encrypted DVDs or the Video-on-CD hybrid format (because of legal issues mentioned earlier related to decrypting DVDs).

Using xine With xine started, right-click in the xine window to see the controls. The quickest way to play video is to click one of the following buttons, and then press the Play button (right arrow or Play, depending on the skin you are using): ■

VCD (for a video CD)

■

DVD (for a DVD in /dev/dvd)

■

CDA (for a music CD in /dev/cdaudio)

Next, you can use the Pause/Resume, Stop, Play, Fast Motion, Slow Motion, and Eject buttons to work with video. You can also use the Previous and Next buttons to step to different tracks. The controls are very similar to what you would expect on a physical CD or DVD player. To select individual files, or to put together your own list of content to play, use the Playlist feature.

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Creating Playlists with Xine Click the Playlist button on the left side of the xine control window. A Playlist Editor appears, showing the files on your current playlist. You can add and delete content and then save the list to call on later. Xine content is identified as media resource locators (MRLs). Each MRL is identified as a file, DVD, or VCD. Files are in the regular file path (/path/file) or preceded by file:/, fifo:/ or stdin:/. DVDs and VCDs are preceded by dvd and vcd, respectively (for example, vcd://01). Table 4-2 shows what the xine Playlist Editor buttons do.

TABLE 4-2

Using the xine Playlist Editor Button

Description

CDA, DVD, or VCD

All content from that CD or DVD is added to the playlist.

Add

See the MRL Browser window. From that window, click File to choose a file from your Linux file system, and then click Select to add that file to the Playlist Editor. (MRL stands for Media Resource Locator, which defines the form in which remote and local content are identified.)

Move Up Selected MRL Move Down Selected MRL

Move up and down the playlist.

Play

Play the contents of the playlist.

Delete Selected MRL

Remove the current selection.

Delete All Entries

Clear the whole playlist.

Save

Save the playlist to your home directory ($HOME/.xine/playlist).

Load

Read in your (saved) playlist.

Xine Tips Getting video and audio to work properly can sometimes be a tricky business. Here are a few quick tips if you are having trouble getting xine to work correctly (or at all): ■

Xine won’t start. To work best, xine needs an X driver that supports xvid. If there is no xvid support for your video card in X, xine shuts down immediately when it tries to open the default Xv driver. If this happens to you, try starting xine with the X11 video driver (which is slower, but should work) as follows: $ xine -VXSHM

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■

4

Xine playback is choppy. If playback of files from your hard disk is choppy, there are a couple of settings you can check: 32-bit I/O and DMA, features that, if supported by your hard disk, generally improve hard disk performance. Here’s how to check:

Improper disk settings can result in destroyed data on your hard disk. Perform this procedure at your own risk. This procedure is for IDE hard drives only (no SCSI)! Also, be sure to have a current backup and no activity on your hard disk if you change DMA or I/O settings as described in this section.

CAUTION

1. Test the speed of hard disk reads. To test the first IDE drive (/dev/hda), type: # hdparm -t /dev/hda Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 19.31 seconds = 3.31 MB/sec

2. To see your current DMA and I/O settings, as root user type: # hdparm -c -d /dev/hda /dev/hda: I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit) using_dma = 0 (off)

3. This result shows that both 32-bit I/O and DMA are off. To turn them on, type: # hdparm -c 1 -d 1 /dev/hda /dev/hda: I/O support = 1 (32-bit) using_dma = 1 (on)

4. With both settings on, test the disk again: # hdparm -t /dev/hda Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.2 seconds = 28.83 MB/sec

In this example, buffered disk reads of 64MB went from 19.31 seconds to 2.2 seconds after changing the parameters described. Playback would be much better now. ■

Xine won’t play particular media. Messages such as no input plug-in mean that either the file format you are trying to play is not supported or it requires an additional plug-in (as is the case with playing DVDs). If the message is that xyx may be a broken file, the file may be a proprietary version of an otherwise supported format. For example, I had a QuickTime video fail that required an SVQ3 codec (which is currently not supported under Linux), although other QuickTime files played fine.

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Using Totem Movie Player The Totem movie player (www.gnome.org/projects/totem) comes with the GNOME desktop environment. In most GNOME desktops, Totem can play video in Theora format with Ogg audio. Totem uses the GStreamer framework (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org) so it can take advantage of any video codes that work with GStreamer. In particular, free and fee-based codecs that you can purchase from www.fluendo.com for playing a variety of commercial audio/video formats will work with Totem. Totem also supports a xine back end that allows it to play a wide range of video content (in other words, anything xine supports). To play commercial DVD movies, you need to install the totem-xine package available (for Fedora, it’s in the rpm.livna.org repository). From that same repository, you can add the libdvdcss, libdvdnav, and xine-lib-extras-nonfree packages (provided the software is legal where you live). Run the totem-xine command instead of totem to play movies. Besides common controls you would expect with a movie player (play, pause, skip forward, skip backwards, and so on), Totem lets you create playlists, take a snapshot of the current frame, and adjust the volume. You can change preferences, which let you add proprietary plug-ins, select your DVD device, and balance color. Figure 4-10 shows an example of the Totem window.

FIGURE 4-10 Play movies on the GNOME desktop with Totem.

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Using a Digital Camera With the GNOME Volume Manager, featured in most Linux systems with GNOME desktops, getting images from a digital camera can be as easy in Linux as it is in any desktop operating system. With most digital cameras that can be connected to a USB port on your computer, simply plugging the camera into a USB port (with the camera set to send and receive) causes the GNOME Volume Manager to do the following: ■

Display a prompt that asks if you want to download images from your camera.

■

Run the gThumb image viewer and browser program that enables you to look at, manipulate, and download the contents of your digital camera.

Although GNOME Volume Manager will open your camera’s contents in an image viewer, you can treat the storage area in your camera much as you would the storage area on a hard disk or a pen drive. This section describes how to use your camera to store other data as well.

Displaying Images in gThumb The GNOME Volume Manager mounts the contents of your USB camera, treating the memory of your camera as it would any file storage device. When I tried it with an Olympus digital camera, my images were available from the /media/usbdisk/dcim/100olymp directory. Figure 4-11 shows an example of the gthumb-import window displaying the images from a digital camera.

FIGURE 4-11 Download images from digital cameras with the gThumb image viewer.

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With your camera connected and the gThumb window open, here are some things you can do with the images on your camera: ■

Download images — Click a single image or select Edit ➪ Select All to highlight all images from your digital camera. Then select File ➪ Import Photos. From the Import Photos window, you can select the destination where you want the images to be downloaded. As an alternative, you can download selected images to a folder on the GNOME desktop.

■

View Slideshow — Select View ➪ Slide Show. A full-screen slideshow appears on your display, with the images changing every few seconds. The toolbar that appears at the top lets you display information about the photo name, date, and size (click Image Info); go forward and back through the images, and zoom in or out.

■

Manipulate images — Double-click an image to open it, and select the Image menu. That menu offers a set of tools for enhancing, resizing, cropping, or otherwise transforming the image. You can also adjust the color balance, hue/saturation, and brightness contrast.

■

Assign categories — With an image selected, click the Categories button. The Categories pop-up window lets you assign the image to a category to help you organize your photos. Assign available categories (such as birthday, family, holidays, or games), or click New and add your own categories.

Once images are downloaded to your computer’s hard disk, you can continue to work with them using gThumb or use any of a number of tools available for manipulating digital images (GIMP, KView, and Kuickshow, to name a few).

NOTE

If your camera saves images to SD or CF cards, you can purchase a USB card reader and view these files from Linux. Some PCs today come with card readers built in.

Using Your Camera as a Storage Device As I noted with my example of an Olympus camera with a USB connector, the GNOME Volume Manager is capable of detecting that camera once it is connected, and mounting its contents as a storage device. With the contents of a digital camera mounted, you can use your camera as a USB mass storage device by doing either of the following: ■

Opening the mounted directory in a folder window and using any file manager features to work with the images

■

Changing to the mounted directory from the shell and using commands to copy, move, rename, or delete digital images

Of course, with your camera mounted as a file system, you are not limited to using it only for digital images. You can use it to store any kind of files you like, essentially using the camera as a storage device. The following list is a partial summary of digital cameras that can be used as a USB storage device:

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■

Casio — QV-2400UX, QV-2x00, QV-3x00, QV-4000, and QV-8000

■

Fuji — FinePix 1300, 1400Zoom, 2300Zoom, 2400Zoom, 2800Zoom, 4200Z, 4500, 4700 Zoom, 4900 Zoom, 6800 Zoom, A101, A201, and S1 Pro

■

HP — PhotoSmart 315, 318xi, 618, and C912

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Konica — KD200Z, KD400Z, and Revio KD300Z

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Kyocera — Finecam s3

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Leica — Digilux 4.3

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Minolta — Dimage 5, Dimage 7, and Dimage X

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Nikon — CoolPix 2500, 885, 5000, 775, and 995

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Olympus — Brio Zoom D-15, C-100, C-200Z, C-2040, C-220Z, C-2Z, C-3020Z, C-3040Z, C-4040Zoom, C-700, C-700UZ, C-860L, D-510, D-520Z, E-10, and E-20

■

Pentax — EI2000, Optio 330, and Optio 430

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Sony — DSC-F505, DSC-F505V, DSC-F707, DSC-P1, DSC-P20, DSC-P5, DSC-P71, DSCS30, DSC-S70, DSC-S75, DSC-S85, MVC-CD300, and MVC-FD92

■

Vivitar — Vivicam 3550

■

Yashica — Finecam s3

4

Summary Getting up and running with digital media can take some doing, but once it’s set up, you can play most audio and video content available today. This chapter takes you through the steps of setting up and troubleshooting your sound card and explains how to find software to play music through that card. Every desktop Linux distribution comes with one or more ways of playing music from files or CDs. Popular music players include XMMS and Rhythmbox. Tools for ripping and recording CDs include Grip and command-line utilities such as cdda2wav and cdrecord. The chapter also covers playing live video from TV cards and Webcams in the sections on tvtime and Ekiga, respectively. Finally, the chapter describes how the xine player can be used to play a variety of video formats and explored the gThumb application for downloading images from a digital camera. If your computer has a CD burner, use the descriptions in this chapter to create your own music CDs and CD labels.

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W

riting documents has always been a mainstay of desktop computers. Linux systems have steadily made up ground on Mac and Windows systems when it comes to desktop publishing applications. Now, nearly every feature you would expect for document writing, layout, and publishing (in hard copy and on the Web) is available with Linux systems. This chapter describes popular Linux office suites (such as OpenOffice. org and KOffice) for creating documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Scribus is an excellent application for doing page layouts. For working with images, I cover the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and a few image viewers (such as Gwenview and Eye of GNOME). For working with vector graphics, I describe the Inkscape vector graphics editor. For displaying the content you create, several different viewers are available that display output in Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript format. Evince viewer and Adobe Reader are available for PDF. To display PostScript files, there’s Ghostview.

IN THIS CHAPTER Desktop publishing in Linux Using word processors Doing page layout with Scribus Taking documents from Windows to Linux Working with images Making Inkscape vector graphics Using scanners Publishing on the Web

To publish on the Web, there are tools for everything from writing basic HTML documents to making Web photo sites to implementing full-blown content management systems. Software that is packaged for Linux to manage your own Web sites include MediaWiki (wiki), WordPress (blogging), Drupal (content management), and Gallery (photo Web site).

Desktop Publishing in Linux Whether you are writing a letter, a memo or a book, you usually begin with a word processor. If your computer doesn’t have much power, you might start with a simple text editor or a less demanding word processor such as AbiWord. Most Linux users, however, begin with OpenOffice.org Writer.

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Using Text Editors and Notepads Before jumping into more complex word processors, here are a few applications you might want to try out if you just want to write some text quickly: ■

GNOME text editor (gedit) — From the GNOME desktop, select Applications ➪ Accessories ➪ Text Editor. With the gedit window that opens, you can just type, cut, and paste, and use arrow keys to move around. In addition to creating text documents, gedit has spell check and search tools. Highlight mode (select View ➪ Highlight Mode) causes different parts of the text you are writing like computer code (such as C or Java) or markup (such as HTML or XML) to be displayed in different colors.

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KDE text editor (KWrite) — From the K Desktop Environment (KDE) desktop, the KWrite application is the default text editor. KWrite includes many of the same text editing features as gedit, but it also has bookmark features and support for multiple language input.

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Sticky notes (Tomboy) — Different note-taking applications include KNotes (for KDE) and Tomboy (for GNOME). Tomboy puts a notepad icon in your top panel, from which you can create and manage notes. Create a new note that includes URLs (click a URL to open the page it points to in a Web browser) and links to other notes. Spelling is checked as you type. Organize notes in notebooks or do keyword searches to find the note you want. Figure 5-1 shows the Tomboy icon, a search window, and an example of a note.

FIGURE 5-1 Create, search, and manage notes with Tomboy.

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If you want to move text from your plain text files or sticky notes to a more formal document, you can copy or cut, and then paste the text into one of the word processors described in the next section.

Using Word Processors OpenOffice.org is a powerful open source office suite, available as a download and as part of many Linux distributions. Based on Sun Microsystem’s StarOffice productivity suite, OpenOffice.org includes a word processor, spreadsheet program, presentation manager, and other personal productivity tools. In most cases, OpenOffice.org can be used as a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office. If you’ve been using Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, most files produced in those applications’ native formats will work in OpenOffice.org. There are descriptions of supported office formats later in this chapter.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

Using theOpenOffice.org Office Suite Some have called OpenOffice.org the most significant threat to Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop market. Thousands in business, education, and government have already migrated their documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. While cost savings are a big reason for using OpenOffice.org, the freedom of not being locked into proprietary formats and forced upgrades may be even more important in the long run. Many distributions of Linux include the entire OpenOffice.org suite of desktop applications. Some include the StarOffice suite in addition to or in lieu of OpenOffice.org. Because of its size, the entire OpenOffice.org suite is usually not included on live CD versions of Linux. However, with an Internet connection, you can usually download and install prepackaged versions of the OpenOffice.org suite. For example, in Fedora, you can install the openoffice.org-calc, openoffice.org-draw, openoffice.org-impress, openoffice.org-writer, and openoffice.org-math packages to get most of the suite.

NOTE

At the time of this writing, the latest version of OpenOffice is 2.4.1.

OpenOffice.org, which shares its source code with StarOffice, consists of the following officeproductivity applications: ■

Writer — A word-processing application that can work with documents in file formats from Microsoft Word, StarOffice, and several others. Writer also has a full set of features for using templates, working with fonts, navigating your documents (including images and effects), and generating tables of contents.

■

Calc — A spreadsheet application that lets you incorporate data from Microsoft Excel, StarOffice, Dbase, and several other spreadsheet formats. Some nice features in Calc enable

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you to create charts, set up database ranges (to easily sort data in an area of a spreadsheet), and use the data pilot tool to arrange data in different points of view. ■

Draw — A drawing application that enables you to create, edit, and align objects; include textures and colors; and work with layers of objects. It lets you incorporate images, vector graphics, AutoCAD, and a variety of other file formats into your drawings. Then, you can save your drawing in the OpenOffice.org Drawing or StarDraw format.

■

Math — A calculation program that lets you create mathematical formulas.

■

Impress — A presentation application that includes a variety of slide effects. You can use Impress to create and save presentations in the Microsoft PowerPoint, StarDraw, and StarImpress formats.

Unlike other applications that were created to work with Microsoft document and data formats, OpenOffice.org (although not perfect) does a very good job of opening and saving those files with fewer problems. Very basic styles and formatting that open in OpenOffice.org often don’t look noticeably different from the way they appear in Microsoft Office. In other cases, such things as bullets, alignment, and indentation can appear quite different in Writer than they do in Word. Also, some Word features, such as macros and scripting features, may not work at all in Writer. For the most part, however, the recent versions of the OpenOffice.org suite handle most Microsoft Office files. In addition, the OpenOffice.org suite supports the ODF, or Open Document Format, a recently standardized file format for office documents. ODF is becoming more and more important with government and scientific organizations that need to be able to access the documents they create for many years in the future. Using the Microsoft Office formats, for example, locks an organization into paying Microsoft’s fee in order to access the organization’s data. In the future, that fee could become too high for the organization, or worse yet, Microsoft may choose not to support files created by older versions of the software. Even today, for example, OpenOffice.org supports older versions of Microsoft Word than Word does. Another nice feature of the OpenOffice.org suite is document signing, so that you can provide better security to shared documents. To open OpenOffice.org applications, select the Applications menu. In most distributions, there’s a folder called Office (or something very similar) located on the Applications menu. Figure 5-2 shows a Microsoft Word document open for editing in OpenOffice.org Writer. The controls in Writer are similar to the ones you find in Word. Toolbars include boxes for changing styles, font types, and font sizes. Buttons let you save and print the file, change the text alignment, and cut, copy, and paste text. In other words, Writer includes almost everything you expect in an advanced word processor. In addition, Writer includes a handy PDF button to output a file directly to the PDF format, which is very useful for exchanging documents or placing data on the Internet.

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FIGURE 5-2 Work with Microsoft Word documents in OpenOffice.org Writer.

Other Word Processors If your distribution does not include the OpenOffice.org suite, or you just want to try something else, you have some other choices: ■

StarOffice — The StarOffice productivity suite contains applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentation graphics, e-mail, news, charting, and graphics. It was created to run on Linux systems, but it runs in other environments as well. It can import and export a variety of Microsoft file formats. StarOffice is owned by Sun Microsystems, which sells it as a commercial product.

■

AbiWord — The AbiWord word processor (abiword command) is noncommercial software and is the first application produced by the AbiSource project (www.abisource.com). In addition to working with files in its own format (.abw and .zabw), AbiWord can import files in Microsoft Word and several other formats.

■

KOffice — The KOffice package contains a set of office productivity applications designed for the KDE desktop (you must have the KDE desktop environment). The noncommercial software includes a word processor (KWord), spreadsheet (KSpread), presentation creator (KPresenter), and diagram-drawing program (KChart). These applications can be run separately or within a KOffice Workspace.

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Using StarOffice The StarOffice suite from Sun Microsystems, Inc. (www.sun.com/software/staroffice) is a product that runs on Linux, UNIX, and Windows operating systems. Like OpenOffice.org, StarOffice contains many features that make it compatible with Microsoft Office applications. In particular, it includes the capability to import Microsoft Word and Excel files. StarOffice is probably the most complete integrated office suite for Linux. It includes: ■

Writer — StarOffice’s word-processing application. It can import documents from a variety of formats, with special emphasis on Word documents.

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Calc — The StarOffice spreadsheet program. You can import spreadsheets from Microsoft Excel and other popular programs.

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Impress — Create presentations with this application.

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Draw — A vector-oriented drawing program that includes the capability to create 3D objects and to use texturing.

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Base — Manage your data sources. You can access a variety of database interfaces.

Other tools in StarOffice enable you to create business graphics, edit raster images, and edit mathematical formulas. You can download StarOffice for Linux or purchase a boxed set from the StarOffice Web site at www.sun.com/software/staroffice. Although StarOffice was once available free for download,

the current price to download the software for home users is $69.95 US, or $99.95 if you purchase it through retail outlets. (You can also get a volume discount.) A trial version is available that you can enable (using a license key) if you decide that you like it enough to purchase the product. One reason to pay for StarOffice when you can get OpenOffice.org software for free is that you get a bunch of extras with StarOffice. The extras include a spell-checker, clip art, many more file converters (although the best ones are for converting Microsoft formats), a database module, and technical support. OpenOffice.org is an open source project sponsored by Sun Microsystems. Sun takes the shared source code used to create OpenOffice.org and combines it with other modules to produce the StarOffice suite. This is very similar to the model used by Red Hat, Inc. where it sponsors the community-driven Fedora project to distribute freely, while the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product (based on Fedora) is sold through subscriptions.

NOTE

Using AbiWord The AbiWord word processor is a very nice, free word processor from the AbiSource project (www.abisource.com). If you are starting documents from scratch, AbiWord includes many of the basic functions you need to create good-quality documents.

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With AbiWord, you can select the type of document the file contains, and select to read the file in the following formats: ■

AbiWord (.abw)

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GZipped AbiWord (.zabw)

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Rich Text Format (.rtf)

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Microsoft Word (.doc)

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UTF8 (.utf8)

■

Text (.txt)

In addition, AbiWord can import and export ODF, DocBook, and OpenOffice.org files. AbiWord doesn’t yet import all these file types cleanly. Although the recent version supports Word styles, sometimes tables, graphics, and other features don’t translate perfectly. If you want to work with a Word document in AbiWord, open it as AbiWord, correct any font problems, and save the document in AbiWord format. AbiWord has vastly improved in the past few releases, but you may still experience problems if you need to exchange files with others who are using Word. (If you want to keep files in the Word format, you’ll find that OpenOffice.org and StarOffice work much better, but not perfectly.) Features recently added to AbiWord such as styles and bullets continue to make it a more useful word-processing tool. It’s not yet competitive with comparable commercial products, but its developers continue to improve it. If you do not have a lot of formatting needs, or if you do not care about Microsoft file formats, AbiWord provides a realistic alternative to larger application suites such as OpenOffice.org. The AbiWord program is small and executes fast, requiring less system resources such as RAM than OpenOffice.org. The speed and size make it a joy to use.

Using KOffice KDE provides an office suite along with hundreds of other programs. The KOffice package has the basic applications you would expect in an integrated office suite: a word processor (KWord), a spreadsheet program (KSpread), a presentation creator (KPresenter), and a diagram-drawing program (KChart). In Fedora and other Linux systems, installing the koffice-suite package will pull in most of the software you need to use KOffice. Start by opening the KOffice Workspace (usually from the Office menu or KDE panel menu). In the workspace window that opens, you can select from the different office applications presented in the left column. Open multiple documents in any of the applications, and then click Documents in the left column to choose which one to display at the moment. Figure 5-3 shows the KOffice Workspace displaying a KWord document.

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FIGURE 5-3 The KOffice Workspace enables you to work with multiple KDE office applications at once.

You can work with a variety of document, spreadsheet, and image types. Not many commercial document types are supported yet, so you may need to import documents using other tools before you can read them into KWord. KSpread, however, can open several different spreadsheet styles, including Microsoft Excel and GNUmeric spreadsheets.

Transitioning Documents from Windows For casual home users, small-office workers, and large corporation personnel alike, moving from Microsoft Office to another Office suite is an experience that can range from simple to harrowing. In general, it is useful to examine this migration in terms of “home use” versus “work use”: ■

Home users typically have to concern themselves with maintaining access to their own documents. In a personal context, it might be rare for friends and relatives to send Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, and PowerPoint presentations. But over the years you may have accumulated term papers, recipes, letters to the editor, account spreadsheets,

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and other such documents that you’d like to be able to read and print. In most cases, OpenOffice.org applications will handle files in Microsoft formats just fine. ■

At work, in addition to the accumulation of documents over time, there is a more pressing issue: Other people will be sharing Microsoft Office documents with you. So while home users need to concern themselves most with access to historical documents, in the workplace you probably need to accommodate new documents as well as your historical information.

Because you can convert your documents, there are no real challenges to migrating simple documents. However, if your Microsoft Office documents include extensive macro, scripting, or embedded object usage, you may find the conversion is not a very clean one. Make sure you attempt conversions using the following options before moving on to the last resort of using multiple applications or re-creating documents. Using Microsoft Office to convert documents enables you to save your files in an alternative format. For example, Word allows you to save your document files (the Word versions anyway) to a variety of formats, including: ■

HTML (.htm/.html) — HTML is a great format for your information if it is basically text and you need only a few formatting options and some embedded images and links. The resulting HTML document will be smaller than the corresponding .doc file.

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Rich Text Format (.rtf) — Another wonderful minimalist format (owned by Microsoft but an open standard nonetheless) that preserves some formatting and graphics, but any scripting or macro usage is lost.

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Plain Text (.txt) — Works if all you need to save is the text of the file. Everything else is lost.

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Word Document (.doc or .docx) — An alternative format that may save some of the elements you want yet make it more accessible to OpenOffice.org. Using this format may not resolve all of the issues you have with converting those hard-to-change documents, but it just might do the trick.

NOTE

The default format for Word 2007 files is .docx — Office Open XML.

Other Microsoft Office applications offer similar functionality. PowerPoint can convert presentations to HTML and general image formats such as JPEG and TIFF. Excel can save tab- and commadelimited files that are easily importable into a large number of applications. If you make use of Access to save data, you may want to move data stored in Access’s .mdb format into a SQL database. SQL is more scalable, powerful, and virtually platform-independent. Migrating to SQL will preserve your data, but if your .mdb file will not open in OpenOffice.org, you will need to re-create any forms for accessing the data that you would like to continue using.

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If you are likely to continue to receive Microsoft Office files and you are concerned about interoperability, here are some options to consider: ■

Keep a copy of Microsoft Office installed using WINE and the CodeWeavers CrossOver Office plug-in. CrossOver Office lets you run Microsoft Word on a Linux desktop. For more information about CrossOver Office, visit CodeWeavers’ Web site at www.codeweavers.com.

■

Ask individuals sending you documentation to use a less vendor-specific format, such as Adobe PDF. Document formatting can be exquisitely preserved and will be viewable by anyone capable of installing a PDF viewer, which supports virtually every operating system in widespread use today. Documents posted on Web sites, for example, should be in PDF and not Microsoft Word format for security reasons.

■

For forms that have user-editable fields, scripting, or complex embedded information, use HTML documents instead. Anyone with a compliant Web browser will be able to interact with the document, and Microsoft Office applications universally support saving files into this format.

■

If you will want to access your documents a long time from now, say a few years, consider storing your documents in the Open Document Format, or ODF. ODF, being open and not encumbered by patents, will make it easier for you to access your documents in the future. If your organization has any requirements for long-term data storage, use ODF. Remember, Microsoft does not support old versions of Word documents today. Furthermore, Word’s latest document format is encumbered by patents, so you may lose the right to access your documents in the future, or you may need to pay any fee required by the vendor. Use ODF.

Before making any wholesale conversion away from Microsoft Office, make sure the files you need to use will work as expected with the new office suite you have selected or that you can construct suitable replacements if needed. Testing things ahead of time enables you to make necessary adjustments without later having to endure the frustration of finding some important document inaccessible or unusable.

CAUTION

Many organizations start their transition away from Microsoft Office by switching to OpenOffice.org on Windows. This way you can have both Office and OpenOffice.org running on the same systems as you gradually work out any conversion issues. Once the issues have been resolved, you can migrate to Linux. In any migration effort, follow good practices such as starting with smaller groups to ensure any glitches or problems are properly handled.

Converting Documents Documents can come to you in many different formats. Search just some of the Linux FTP sites on the Internet and you will find files in PostScript, DVI, man, PDF, HTML, and TeX. There are also a variety of graphics formats. Table 5-1 provides a list of common document and graphics conversion utilities. Many graphical applications, such as GIMP, also enable you to save images into several different formats (BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and so on) through the use of the Save As feature.

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TABLE 5-1

Document and Graphics Conversion Utilities Utility

Converts

To

dos2unix

DOS text file

UNIX (Linux) text file

fax2ps

TIFF facsimile image files

Compressed PostScript format (The PostScript output is optimized to send to a printer on a lowspeed line. This format is less efficient for images with a lot of black or continuous tones, for which tiff2ps might be more effective.)

fax2tiff

Fax data (Group 3 or Group 4)

TIFF format (The output is either low-resolution or medium-resolution TIFF format.)

g32pbm

Group 3 fax file (either digifax or raw)

Portable bitmap

gif2tiff

GIF (87) file

TIFF format

man2html

Man page

HTML format

pal2rgb

TIFF image (palette color)

Full-color RGB image

pbm2g3

Portable bitmap image

Fax file (Group 3)

pdf2dsc

PDF file

PostScript document dsc file (The PostScript file conforms to Adobe Document Structuring Conventions. The output enables PostScript readers such as Ghostview to read the PDF file one page at a time.)

pdf2ps

PDF file

PostScript file (level 2)

pfb2pfa

Type 1 PostScript font (binary MS-DOS )

ASCII-readable

pk2bm

TeX pkfont font file

Bitmap (ASCII file)

ppm2tiff

PPM image file

TIFF format

ps2ascii

PostScript or PDF file

ASCII text

ps2epsi

PostScript file

Encapsulated PostScript (EPSI) (Some wordprocessing and graphics programs can read EPSI. Output is often low quality.)

ps2pdf

PostScript file

Portable Document Format (PDF)

ps2pk

Type 1 PostScript font

TeX pkfont

pstotext

PostScript file

ASCII text (pstotext is similar to ps2ascii but handles font encoding and kerning better. It doesn’t convert PDFs.) continued

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TABLE 5-1

(continued)

Utility

Converts

To

ras2tiff

Sun raster file

TIFF format

texi2html

Texinfo file

HTML

tiff2bw

RGB or Palette color TIFF image

Grayscale TIFF image

tiff2ps

TIFF image

PostScript

unix2dos

UNIX (Linux) text file

DOS text file

Building Structured Documents Documentation projects often need to produce documents that are output in a variety of formats. For example, the same text that describes how to use a software program may need to be output as a printed manual, an HTML page, and a PostScript file. The standards that have been embraced most recently by the Linux community for creating what are referred to as structured documents are SGML and XML. The specific document type definition (DTD) used to produce Linux documentation is called DocBook.

Understanding SGML and XML Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) was created to provide a standard way of marking text so that it could be output later in a variety of formats. Because SGML markup is done with text tags, you can create SGML documents using any plain-text editor. Documents consist of the text of your document and tags that identify each type of information in the text. Unlike markup languages such as Groff and TeX, SGML markup is not intended to enforce a particular look when you are creating the document. So, for example, instead of marking a piece of text as being bold or italic, you would identify it as an address, a paragraph, or a name. Later, a style sheet would be applied to the document to assign a look and presentation to the tagged text. HTML is an example of SGML markup. Because SGML consists of many tags, other projects have cropped up to simplify the production of documents based on SGML and to better focus the ways in which SGML is used. In particular, the Extensible Markup Language (XML) was created to offer a manageable subset of SGML that would be specifically tailored to work well with Web-based publishing. So far in this description of SGML and XML, I’ve discussed only the frameworks that are used to produce structured documents. Specific documentation projects need to create and, to some extent, enforce specific markup definitions for the type of documents they need to produce. These definitions are referred to as Document Type Definitions (DTDs). For documentation of Linux itself and other open source projects, DocBook has become the DTD of choice.

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Understanding DocBook DocBook is a DTD that is well suited for producing computer software documents in a variety of formats. It was originally created by the OASIS Consortium (www.oasis-open.org) and is now supported by many different commercial and open source tools. DocBook’s focus is on marking content, instead of indicating a particular look (that is, font type, size, position, and so on). It includes markup that lets you automate the process of creating indexes, figure lists, and tables of contents, to name a few. DocBook is important to the Linux and open source community because many open source projects use it to produce documentation. The following is a list of organizations that use DocBook to create the documents that describe their software: ■

The Linux Documentation Project (TLDP) www.tldp.org/LDP/LDP-Author-Guide

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GNOME Documentation Project http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gdp/handbook/gdp-handbook

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KDE Documentation Project www.kde.org/documentation

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FreeBSD Documentation Project www.freebsd.org/docproj/

If you want to contribute to any of these documentation projects, refer to the Web sites for each organization. In all cases, they publish writers’ guides or style guides that describe the DocBook tags that they support.

Creating DocBook Documents You can create the documents in any text editor, using tags that are similar in appearance to HTML tags (with beginning and end tags appearing between less-than and greater-than signs). Certain word-processing programs also allow you to create DocBook markup. The following steps show an example of a simple DocBook XML document produced with a plaintext editor and output into HTML using tools that are available in many Linux systems. Install the docbook-utils package (in Fedora and other Linux systems) to get the DocBook utilities you need.

NOTE

The DocBook DTD is available in both SGML and XML forms. Of the two, the XML form is actively maintained.

1. Create a directory in your home directory to work in and go to that directory. For example, you can type the following from a Terminal window: $ mkdir $HOME/doctest $ cd $HOME/doctest

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2. Open a text editor to hold your DocBook document. For example, you can type: $ gedit cardoc.xml

3. Enter the tags and text that you want to appear in your document. Most DocBook documents are either type (large, multichapter documents) or <article> type (singlechapter documents). To try out a DocBook document, type the following: <article> Choosing a new car <artheader> In this article, you will learn how to price, negotiate for, and purchase an automobile. <section> Getting Started <para> The first thing you will learn is how to figure out what you can afford. <section> The Next Step <para> After you know what you can afford, you can begin your search.

You should notice a few things about this document. The entire document is wrapped in article tags (<article> ). The article title is in title tags ( ). The section tags (<section> ) indicate sections of text that each have a title and paragraph. These sections can later be treated separately in the Table of Contents. 4. Save the file and exit from the text editor. 5. Next, you can try translating the document you just created into several different formats. For example, to create HTML output, you can type the following: $ db2html cardoc.xml

The result is a new directory called cardoc. The result from db2html in the cardoc directory is the creation of a stylesheet-images directory, a t1.html file, and an x8.html

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file. (You will also see a lot of scary-looking error messages when you run the db2html program. For now, you can ignore them. Ideally, the cardoc.xml document should have a reference to the DocBook DTD.) To view the HTML file just created, I typed the following: $ firefox $HOME/doctest/cardoc/t1.html

Figure 5-4 shows an example of the output created from the db2html command. The screen on the left shows the first page. Click the Next link at the top of the page. The second page that you see is shown on the right. During conversion to HTML, the db2html command adds Next/Previous buttons to each page. It also puts the title of each section in a Table of Contents on page 1 and in the browser’s title bar.

FIGURE 5-4 The DocBook file is output in HTML with the db2html command.

From this point, you can continue to add content and different types of tags. If you are writing documents for a particular project (such as the Linux projects mentioned earlier), you should get information on the particular tags and other style issues they require.

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Converting DocBook Documents The previous example shows how to create a simple DocBook document and convert it to HTML output. The following utilities convert DocBook to other formats: ■

docbook2dvi — Device-independent file format

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docbook2html — HTML format

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docbook2man — Man page format

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docbook2pdf — Portable Document Format (PDF)

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docbook2ps — PostScript format

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docbook2rtf — Rich Text Format (RTF)

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docbook2tex — TeX format

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docbook2texi — GNU TeXinfo format

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docbook2txt — Bare text format

If some of the commands just described are not installed on your system from the docbook-utils package, try installing the docbook-utils-pdf package.

Doing Page Layout with Scribus For brochures, magazines, newsletters, catalogs, and other materials that need more sophisticated layouts than you can do with a word processor, you need a page layout application. The most popular open source page layout application is called Scribus (www.scribus.net). Although Scribus is intended primarily to produce print publications, you can also use Scribus to produce what are referred to as intelligent PDFs. With PDFs you create with Scribus, you can include JavaScript and other features to let others interact with your text (such as by filling in forms). Scribus is packaged with several different Linux distributions. In Fedora and other distributions, install the scribus package. The package comes with templates and samples you can use to start your own projects with (usually in /usr/share/scribus/). With the scribus package installed, you can start Scribus from the GNOME desktop by selecting Applications ➪ Office ➪ Scribus. Figure 5-5 shows an example of a brochure layout in Scribus. After Scribus is running on your desktop, you can start by selecting a template (select File ➪ New from Template). Choose a brochure, newsletter, presentation, or text-based layout to begin with. Here are some things you can do with the sample layout to get used to using Scribus: ■

Edit text — Right-click a text box and select Edit text. In the Story Editor window that appears, change the text, point size, scaling width/height of the text, font, text alignment, color, and other attributes. Select File ➪ Update Text Frame and Exit to save the changes.

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Add images — Right-click an image box and select Get Image. Browse your folders for the image you want. If the image doesn’t fit, right-click the image and select Edit Image to open the image in GIMP to resize or otherwise modify it. Right-click the image and select Adjust Frame to Image to resize the frame to fit your image.

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Change existing frames — Right-click any frame, and then select Is Locked so the check box disappears. Once the frame is unlocked, you can do a lot to change it. Grab a corner or side of the frame to resize it. Right-click it and select Sample Text to fill it with text, or Cut, Copy, or Delete. Grab the frame with your mouse to drag and drop it somewhere else. When you are done changing the frame, select Is Locked to lock the frame in place again.

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Change document attributes — Select File ➪ Document Setup. From the Document Setup window that appears, you can change the size and orientation of the page, as well as the type of page (single, double-sided, three-fold, or four-fold). Likewise, you can change all margins. Select topics from the left to add information such as author, title, and keywords. You can also change fonts and hyphenation or add a table of contents.

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Drawing — You can do freehand drawing anywhere on your Scribus layout. Select the Insert Freehand Line button (pencil icon) or Insert Bezier Curve button (ink pen icon), and then use the mouse to draw lines on the page. You can also draw boxes, polygons, or lines using buttons on the toolbar. Right-click the drawn element and select Properties. From the Properties window, you can adjust the shape, line, and colors of the drawing.

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FIGURE 5-5 Produce professional quality layouts with Scribus.

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When you are done creating your layout, you can print it by selecting File ➪ Print. The Preflight Verifier window appears with information about the printed document. At the top-right corner of the page, you can select to change from PostScript format to one of several PDF versions. You can then choose to direct the output to the printer or have it go to a PDF or PostScript file.

Working with Graphics Tools for creating and manipulating graphics are becoming both more plentiful and more powerful in Linux systems as a whole. Leading the list is the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). GIMP enables you to compose and author images as well as retouch photographs. To work with vector graphics (where geometric shapes represent images, instead of just dots), Inkscape is a popular open source application. Other tools for creating graphics include ksnapshot (a program for taking screen captures) and kpaint (for working with bitmap images).

Manipulating Images with GIMP GIMP is a free software program for manipulating photographs and graphical images. To create images with GIMP, you can either import a drawing, photograph, or 3D image, or you can create one from scratch. You can start GIMP from the system menu by selecting Graphics ➪ The GIMP or by typing gimp& from a Terminal window. Figure 5-6 shows an example of GIMP. In many ways, GIMP is similar to Adobe Photoshop. Some people feel that GIMP’s scripting features are comparable to or even better than Actions in Adobe Photoshop. One capability that GIMP lacks, however, is native support for CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) separations. If CMYK is not critical for your graphics needs, you will probably find GIMP to be just as powerful and flexible as Photoshop in many ways. See www.blackfiveservices.co.uk/separate.shtml for a CMYK plug-in for GIMP. This plug-in provides only rudimentary support for CMYK, according to its documentation. Even so, that may be enough for your needs.

TIP

With an image open, you can select tools from the GIMP window to work on the image. When you select a tool, notice that options for that tool appear in tabs below. Figure 5-7 shows the GIMP tools, along with callouts indicating what the tools do.

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FIGURE 5-6 GIMP is a powerful tool for graphics manipulation.

FIGURE 5-7 Use the GIMP window to choose tools for changing images.

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The following list describes the tools shown in Figure 5-7: ■

Path tool — Use the path tool to create special types of rectangle, elliptical, or free-form shapes. Try creating a rectangle, with the final point ending on the first. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the first point to close the box. With the shape complete, select Stroke Path to define the shape with a solid or pattern line.

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Color picker — Use the color picker to select any color from your image as your foreground or background color.

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Magnify — Select this tool, and then click and drag to choose an area of your image. That area of your image will fill the screen. Or just click to zoom in or Ctrl+click to zoom out on the image.

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Measure — With measure selected, click and drag your mouse from one point to another. The status bar shows the distance (in pixels), angle, width, and height you just measured.

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Select tools — Use the select tools to select different areas of your image. You can select a rectangle, ellipse, hand-drawn area, a region based on color, an edge of an element, or an area based on foreground objects. Once an area is selected, you can cut, copy, fill, paste, or do other things with it.

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Text tool — Select the text tool, click the image, and begin typing to add text to that point in the image. From the options below, you can change the font, size, color, justification, and other options relating to the text.

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Paint tools — Use these tools to add lines and colors to your image. The bucket tool fills a selected area or similar color with the current foreground color, background color, or pattern. The gradient tool lets you shade an area from one color to another. Use the pencil, brush, ink, or airbrush tools to draw lines. Paint over one part of an image from a sample taken from another part of an image or from a selected pattern using the clone tool. Use blur, smudge, and dodge/burn tools to blur and soften selected areas of the image. Erase (to transparency or to the layer below) using the erase tool.

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Foreground and background colors — The two color boxes show the foreground (upper right) and background (lower left) colors. Click to open a dialog to change either of those colors. Click the swap arrows to switch the two colors.

You can also access the tools just described from the Tools menu. Select the Dialogs menu to see a list of dialog boxes you can display to work with layers, channels, paths, patterns, fonts, and other elements you want to include or change in your image.

TIP

If you make a mistake, select Edit ➪ Undo from the GIMP menu, or press the Ctrl+Z key combination. You can step backwards to do multiple undos in this way as well.

Creating Vector Graphic Images with Inkscape When you need to have maximum flexibility working with graphics and text, a vector graphic editor can let you deal with geometric elements (such as lines, curves, and boxes) instead of dots (as you do with image editors). As a result, you usually get cleaner edges on your fonts and graphics and the

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ability to bend and shape those elements as you like. Inkscape (www.inkscape.org) is a popular vector graphics editor that is available with most Linux systems. With Inkscape, you have an application with features similar to those you would find in commercial products such as Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw. Inkscape creates images in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format — an open standard from the W3C (www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG). Thousands of SVG graphics and clipart elements are available in the public domain or under Creative Commons licenses. If you are using a Linux distribution such as Fedora, install the inkscape package to get Inkscape. I recommend you also install the openclipart package, which will give you hundreds of clipart items to use in your Inkscape creations. With the inkscape and openclipart packages installed, select Applications ➪ Graphics ➪ Inkscape Vector Graphics Editor to open an Inkscape window. Figure 5-8 shows an example of the Inkscape window.

FIGURE 5-8 Inkscape enables you to manipulate graphics and text.

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You can start by opening one of the dozens of templates available with Inkscape (select File ➪ New and choose from web banner, business card, DVD cover, or other templates). With the new window open, here are some ways to get started with Inkscape: ■

Add text — Select the text icon from the toolbar on the left, click on the page, and begin typing. After typing some text, choose the Select icon and click on the text. Use the side or corner arrows to resize the text. Click the text again and use the arrows around the text to slant or rotate the text. Grab the text box with the mouse and drag it where you want it to go. With the text still selected, select Text ➪ Text and Font to see a window where you can choose the font family, font style, layout, and line spacing.

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Add graphical elements — From the toolbar on the left, select the rectangle, 3D box, circles, start, or swirls button. Move the mouse cursor to the place where you want the new element, click and hold the mouse on that place, and move the mouse so the new element grows to the size you want. Click the color palette on the bottom of the screen to change the element’s color.

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Add clipart — If you added the openclipart package, you can import clipart from there. Select File ➪ Import and browse the /usr/share/clipart/openclipart folder. Choose from hundreds of SVG clipart images in categories such as food, geography, office, recreation, tools, and transportation. Once the image is imported, use your mouse to select and shape it as you did with the text.

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Group objects — Select a text or clipart object, and then hold down the Shift key and select other objects. When all the objects you want in the group are selected, choose Object ➪ Group. You can now move all the grouped objects around together as one unit.

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Use layers — Select the Layer button to add, delete, raise, or lower layers.

When you are done creating your vector graphic, you can print that graphic by selecting File ➪ Print. From the Print window, you can select to have the image in vector or bitmap form from the Rendering tab.

Acquiring Screen Captures Several screen capture tools are available with Linux systems. You can take a screenshot from the GIMP program just described by selecting File ➪ Acquire ➪ Screenshot. On GNOME desktops, select Applications ➪ Accessories ➪ Take Screenshot. From most KDE desktops, select Graphics ➪ KSnapshot. Using the example of the GNOME Take Screenshot tool, a dialog box appears that lets you choose to grab the whole desktop or grab the current window. You can set a delay of several seconds, if you need to set up something such as opening a menu before you take the shot. Then click Take Screenshot. Figure 5-9 shows an example of the Take Screenshot window after it has captured an image of the current desktop. Select a folder to hold the screen shot and type a name for the image. Then click Save to save it.

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FIGURE 5-9 Grab a picture of your desktop or selected window with the Take Screenshot utility.

Viewing Images If you want to browse through a folder of images and possibly make some simple changes, both KDE and GNOME desktops offer some easy-to-use image viewers. When you open an image from a KDE folder, the Gwenview image viewer opens that image. In GNOME, Eye of GNOME is the default image viewer. Gwenview does a good job with the basics for managing images if, for example, you are working with a folder of images downloaded from a digital camera. Click the Preview button to preview thumbnails of images in the folder. Zoom in or zoom out to get a better look at each image. If the image is on its side, you can rotate it left or right. From the Edit menu, you can also flip, resize, crop, or create a mirror image of the current image. Figure 5-10 shows the Gwenview window. Double-click an image file in a folder window (or right-click the image and select Open with Image Viewer) to open that image in Eye of GNOME. The Eye of GNOME image viewer doesn’t offer as many features for cutting and resizing as does Gwenview. However, you can still rotate and save those changes, if necessary. Select Edit ➪ Properties to view information about the height, width, size, type, and folder for each image. Under the View menu, you can also view Eye of GNOME in Full Screen mode or as a Slideshow. With Image Collection selected from the View menu (or by pressing the F9 function key), you can step through thumbnails of each image in the current folder. Figure 5-11 shows an example of Eye of GNOME with the Image Collection view selected (notice that the name in the window title bar changes to that of the selected image).

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FIGURE 5-10 Go through your images in KDE with Gwenview.

FIGURE 5-11 Step through a folder of images and do simple modifications with Eye of GNOME.

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Displaying PDF and PostScript Documents Document publishing can be very paper-intensive if you send a word-processing document to the printer each time you want to make a change to the document’s content or formatting. To save paper and time spent running around, use a print preview program to display your document on the screen as it will appear on the printed page. Likewise, these viewers can be useful to display documents you want to read that are in a read-only format (such as many PDF or PostScript files). The following sections describe how to use the ghostscript and ggv commands for displaying PostScript files and Adobe Reader for displaying PDF files.

Using the ghostscript and gv Commands To display PostScript or PDF documents in Linux, you can use the ghostscript command. It is a fairly crude interface, intended to let you step through documents and interpret them one line at a time. You can display any PostScript or PDF file you happen to have on your computer. For example, if the samba package is installed, you can type the following to display a PDF file (otherwise, you can find your own PDF file to try it): $ ghostscript -sDEVICE=x11 /usr/share/doc/samba-doc*/Samba-HOWTO.pdf >>showpage, press to continue<<

At the prompt, press Enter (or Return) to go through the file one page at a time. When you have reached the end of the document, you can type the name of another PostScript or PDF file and page through that file. When you are done, type quit. You may also see warning or error messages if ghostscript detects problems in the PostScript or PDF file. In most cases, if you can see the document’s contents, you can ignore the messages. The ggv command (GNOME Ghostview) is another, more friendly way of viewing PostScript files. To use ggv to open a file called bashref.ps, type the following: $ ggv /usr/share/doc/bash-doc-*/bashref.ps

When the Ghostview window opens, you can see the document. Left-click on the page and move the mouse up and down to scroll the document. Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to page through the document. You can click a page number in the left column to jump to a particular page or click the Print All button to print the entire document.

Using Adobe Reader The Portable Document Format (PDF) provides a way to store documents as they would appear in print. With Adobe Reader, you can view PDF files in a very friendly way. Adobe Reader makes it easy to move around within a PDF file. A PDF file may include hyperlinks, a table of contents, graphics, and a variety of type fonts. Recent versions even allow you to fill in forms or mark up content.

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You can get Adobe Reader for Linux from the Adobe Web site (www.adobe.com/products/ acrobat/readstep2.html). If you have need for any special forms or editing functions on PDF documents, you should get this reader, as opposed to using an open source PDF viewer such as Evince or Ghostview. After you install Adobe Reader, select Applications ➪ Office ➪ Adobe Reader to start it. Or you can type the following command to start the program: $ acroread

Choose File ➪ Open, and then select the name of a PDF file you want to display. Figure 5-12 shows an example of a PDF file viewed in Adobe Reader.

FIGURE 5-12 Display PDF files in Adobe Reader.

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Adobe Reader has a lot of nice features. For example, you can display a list of bookmarks alongside the document and click a bookmark to take you to a particular page. You can also display thumbnails of the pages to quickly scroll through and select a page. Using the menu bar or buttons, you can page through the PDF document, zoom in and out, go to the beginning or end of the document, and display different views of the document (as well as display bookmarks and page thumbnails). To print a copy, choose File ➪ Print. Other document-viewing programs include Evince and KghostView, a KDE version of th GhostView program.

Using Scanners with SANE Software for using a scanner with Linux is being driven by an effort called Scanner Access Now Easy (SANE). This effort hopes to standardize how device drivers for equipment such as scanners, digital still cameras, and digital video cameras are created, as well as help simplify the interfaces for applications that use those devices. SANE is now included with a variety of Linux distributions. Someone wanting to use Linux as a publishing platform is generally interested in two issues about scanners: which scanners are supported and which applications are available to use the scanners. For older scanners, SCSI scanners are generally better supported than parallel scanners. These days, USB scanners are the most popular and best supported scanners. Because of the ongoing development effort, new scanners are being supported all the time. You can find a current list of supported scanners at www.sane-project.org/sane-supporteddevices.html, with USB scanners listed at www.buzzard.me.uk/jonathan/scanners-usb .html. Epson scanners are most often recommended for Linux. As for scanning applications, some of the more widely used tools available today include: ■

xsane — An X-based graphical front end for SANE scanners, xsane can work as a GIMP plug-in or as a separate application (from most KDE desktops, select Graphics ➪ Scanning). It supports 8-bit output in JPG, TIFF, PNG, PostScript, and PNM formats. There is experimental 16-bit support for PNM (ASCII), PNG, and raw formats.

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scanimage — Use this command-line interface to obtain scanned images. The command acquires the scanned image, and then directs the data to standard output (so you can send it to a file or pipe it to another program). It supports the same formats as xsane.

In addition to these applications, the OpenOffice.org suite supports SANE. Because of the architecture of SANE scanner drivers, it is possible to separate scanner drivers from scanner applications. This makes it possible to share scanners across a network.

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Web Publishing The final destination for your documents and images doesn’t have to be paper. Publishing on the Web has become commonplace in the past few years. If you want to control your own Web site for publishing your thoughts and pictures to the world, Linux systems include many software packages to help you do that. If you are creating simple HTML Web pages, you can build basic HTML documents using word processors such as OpenOffice.org Writer or SeaMonkey Composer. If you are really brave, you might even try a plain text editor and add the HTML markup manually. For more complex Web sites, however, there are lots of options. The following list describes open source software packages that can be used for publishing on the Web. All of the software packages described here are packaged for Fedora, as well as other Linux distributions. Web servers are constant targets for bad guys on the Internet. If you decide to try some of the software described below, be sure to check with the project site to make sure you get the latest security patches and updates.

CAUTION ■

Image galleries — The Gallery project (http://gallery.menalto.com) lets you create online photo albums. Gallery makes it easy for you to organize photos into albums, edit your images, tag them, and present them using a variety of themes and colors. In Fedora, install the gallery2 package.

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Blogging software — The popular WordPress site (http://wordpress.com) uses its own open source WordPress software (http://wordpress.org) to offer blogging accounts to others. If you want your own blogging site, you can either sign up for a free account on WordPress.com or you can use that software to set up your own blogging site. Install the wordpress package in Fedora to get started. Figure 5-13 shows an example of a blog that relies on WordPress software running from WordPress.com.

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Wiki software — Wikis let you gather and organize large amounts of information online. Instead of having to write everything on a subject by yourself, by creating a wiki you can allow people to sign up for accounts and add and correct articles on your site. Wiki software available to the open source community includes MediaWiki (install the mediawiki package) and MoinMoin (install the moin package). See the MediaWiki.org and MoinMoin.wikiwikiweb.de sites, respectively, for further information.

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Content management system (CMS) software — For some Web sites, you might want to offer a range of information. For an active online community, you may want to offer articles, forums, online polls, downloads, and other diverse activities. Content management systems (CMS) such as Drupal (install the drupal package) offer a platform for creating and managing those types of activities online. Other open source CMS systems include Plone (http://plone.org) and Zope (www.zope.org). Both Plone and Zope are packaged for Fedora and other Linux systems (plone and zope packages, respectively).

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FIGURE 5-13 With WordPress, you create your own blogging site.

Before installing and making any of these types of Web sites available on the Internet, you should keep in mind that it will take some commitment to stay current with software updates and keep the site maintained. But if you are willing to make that commitment, the open source projects just mentioned can help you produce high-quality sites for publishing on the Internet.

Summary Tools available in Linux for publishing words and images on paper and the Web can compete with similar software available commercially. For producing hardcopy documents, you have word processors such as OpenOffice.org Writer, AbiWord, and StarOffice. To lay out pages, there is Scribus. To work with photos, you have GIMP, and for vector graphics, you can use Inkscape. Software for publishing content on the Internet is also available now in almost any category you can think of. For blogging, you can create a WordPress site. For image galleries, there is Gallery software. Content management systems include Drupal, Plone, and Zope. For image galleries, there is Gallery software. Content management systems include Drupal, Plone, and Zope. To create wikis, there are MediaWiki and Moin Moin.

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eb browsers and e-mail clients available with Linux have seen incredible improvements over the past few years. Their features rival those you can get on the most popular Windows clients. Security issues with Outlook mail clients and Internet Explorer browsers have many people taking a fresh look at Linux and open source software for accessing the Internet. This chapter describes some of the best Web, e-mail, chat, and related tools for accessing the Internet that you can get with the Linux distributions described in this book. If you have never worked with the Internet from Linux, or haven’t for a few years, you might be blown away by what’s available today.

IN THIS CHAPTER Reading e-mail with Thunderbird Mail Managing e-mail in Evolution Using text-based e-mail clients Browsing the Web with Firefox Browsing with SeaMonkey Using text-based Web browsers

Using E-Mail Any Linux desktop system worth the name desktop system will have at least one or two applications for sending, receiving, and managing your e-mail. Many users believe that superior tools for managing spam and generally better security mechanisms make Linux a great desktop platform for managing your e-mail.

Choosing an E-Mail Client Choices of e-mail clients range from those that look like clones of popular Windows e-mail programs to those that run in plain text from the shell,

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and interfaces vary widely with the e-mail clients that are available with Linux. Here are some different ways in which e-mail clients are integrated into Linux: ■

Standalone — These days, most e-mail clients are standalone applications in their own right. The primary standalone e-mail application is Mozilla Thunderbird 2 (www.mozilla .com/en-US/thunderbird/), although you can find 50 or more choices on Linux, such as Sylpheed (sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/).

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With a Web browser — Many popular Web browsers include an integrated e-mail client. By configuring the e-mail client that comes with your browser, you are ready to launch a new e-mail message by clicking on a mailto link from a browser window. You can also easily open the e-mail client from your Web browser’s toolbar. Feature-rich Mozilla SeaMonkey Mail (www.seamonkey-project.org) is a popular e-mail client for Linux to come with a Web browser. Netscape Communicator (http:// netscape.aol.com) is another Web browser that has its own mail client (although it has been dropped from many Linux distributions because of licensing issues). Most users, however, use the separated clients Thunderbird for e-mail and Firefox for Web browsing. The Opera (www.opera.com) Web browser also includes an integrated e-mail client. It is perhaps the most elegant of the e-mail clients that comes with a Web browser. Opera is available for personal use without cost.

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With groupware — Some e-mail clients have been bundled with other personal productivity applications to form integrated groupware applications. The most popular of these in Linux is Evolution, which is bundled as the default e-mail client with several different Linux distributions. Besides e-mail, Evolution includes a calendar, task list, and contacts directory. (A company named Ximian originally produced Evolution. Novell, Inc. purchased Ximian, and then later renamed and rebranded Ximian Evolution as Novell Evolution.)

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From the shell — Many old school UNIX and Linux power users prefer to use an e-mail client that runs without a graphical desktop. Although not always intuitive to use, textbased e-mail readers run much faster than their graphical counterparts. The mail command dates back to the earliest UNIX systems (where there was no GUI). The mutt e-mail client is popular among power users because of its capability to manage large mailboxes and attachments efficiently.

Features inside each e-mail client can help you distinguish between them. While most e-mail clients let you get, compose, send, and manage e-mail messages, here are a few extra features you might look for: ■

Filters and spam catchers — Thunderbird, Evolution, and other mail clients offer message filters and junk mail detectors. You use filters to set up rules to sort incoming mail into different folders, delete certain messages, or otherwise respond to incoming mail. Some e-mail clients also have features that try to automatically detect when junk mail has arrived. If you get a lot of e-mail, these can be invaluable tools for managing your e-mail. (Select the Tools or Message menu from your e-mail client, and then look for a Filters or Junk Mail selection.)

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Security features — E-mail clients such as Thunderbird (www.mozilla.com/en-US/ thunderbird/) enable you to use message encryption, digital signatures, and other security features to keep your e-mail private.

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Sorting, searching, marking, and displaying — Again, if you are managing lots of e-mail messages at once (some people manage thousands of messages), the capability to refer back to the one you want can be critical. Some clients let you sort by date, sender, priority, subject, and other items. You might be able to search message contents for text or choose how to display the messages (such as without showing attachments or with source code shown).

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Mail composition tools — Some mail composers let you include HTML in your messages, which enables you to add images, links, tables, colors, font changes, and other visual enhancements to your messages. One warning: Some mailing lists don’t like you to send messages in HTML because some people still use plain-text readers that aren’t HTML-aware.

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Multiple accounts — Many e-mail clients enable you to configure multiple e-mail accounts to be served by your e-mail reader. Early plain-text e-mail clients pointed to only one mailbox at a time.

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Performance — Some lightweight graphical e-mail clients give you much better performance than others. In particular, the Sylpheed e-mail client (which comes with Damn Small Linux) was created to use a minimal amount of memory and processing power, yet still provide a graphical interface. E-mail clients that run from the keyboard, in particular the mutt e-mail client, will run much faster than, say, most full-blown graphical e-mail clients such as Evolution.

For most home and small business users, Evolution and the standalone Thunderbird are often available from a Linux desktop and will give you much the same experience you would expect from Microsoft Windows mail clients, such as Outlook Express. If you are using the KDE desktop, you can use the KDE groupware client Kontact, which includes Kmail (the e-mail client), along with a contact manager, calendar, to-do list application, and more.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

Even though the Linux distribution you are using may have only one or two of the e-mail clients described in this section, you can always add a client that interests you.

Getting Here from Windows To understand how to transition your e-mail client from Windows to Linux, you need to know a bit about your current e-mail setup. Whether you are using Outlook, Outlook Express, or any other e-mail client running in Windows, here are some things you should know: ■

Server type — Is your e-mail server a POP3 or IMAP server? If it is an IMAP server, all your messages are being stored on the server. Transitioning to a different e-mail server might simply mean pointing the new e-mail client at your server and continuing to use e-mail as you always have. If it is a POP3 server, your messages have probably been downloaded to your local client. To keep your old messages, you need to somehow bring your current mail folders over to your new client, which is a potentially tricky undertaking.

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(When you sign up for your e-mail account or Internet service, the people providing the service should tell you whether the service is POP3 or IMAP.) ■

Address book — You need to export your current address book to a format that can be read by your new e-mail client, and import it to your new e-mail client.

To transition to Linux, you may want to add a cross-platform e-mail client such as Thunderbird to your Windows system so that you can get at your resources (addresses, stored mail messages, and so on) during the transition to your new mail client. When you eventually move off Windows altogether, Thunderbird for Linux will work almost exactly as it does in Windows. If your current e-mail server is a Microsoft Exchange server (2000, 2003, or 2007), you need to get the Evolution Plug-in for Microsoft Exchange to allow Evolution to access information from that server. For Fedora, you need to install the evolution-exchange package then identify your mail server as Microsoft Exchange when you create a new e-mail account.

Getting Started with E-Mail Most Linux systems include an e-mail client that you can select on a panel or by left-clicking on the desktop to bring up a menu. Look for an envelope icon on a panel or a submenu labeled something like Internet. If you want a graphical e-mail reader, you can start by looking for one of these clients: Evolution, Mozilla SeaMonkey Mail, Thunderbird, or KMail. After you have launched your chosen e-mail client, you need some information to use it. When you first start most graphical e-mail clients, a configuration screen of some sort asks you to set up an account. Here’s how to begin setting up a mail account for the e-mail clients described in this chapter: ■

Evolution — The Evolution Setup Assistant starts the first time each user opens Evolution. After that, select Edit ➪ Preferences from the main Evolution window. Then choose Mail Accounts and double-click the mail account you want to modify or select Add to add a new account.

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Mozilla SeaMonkey Mail — An account wizard starts the first time you open SeaMonkey Mail. After that, you can set up or modify accounts from the SeaMonkey Mail window by clicking Edit ➪ Mail & Newsgroups Account Settings.

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Thunderbird — This is the next-generation mail client from the people that bring you Firefox and Mozilla (mozilla.org). Now at version 2.0, and with more advanced security features, you might consider Thunderbird. Not only is it faster than SeaMonkey Mail and Evolution, Thunderbird is an ideal complement to the Mozilla Firefox Web browser. Firefox and Thunderbird run on a number of operating systems, including Linux, Solaris, Microsoft Windows, and Mac OS X.

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Sylpheed — The Sylpheed e-mail client (http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/) is used on some mini-desktop distributions, such as Damn Small Linux. Sylpheed is particularly fast

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and efficient, and it supports for powerful features such as filtering, search, junk mail control, and digital signing and encryption (using GnuPG). ■

KMail — From the KMail window, select Settings ➪ Configure KMail. From the Configure KMail window that appears, select the Network icon. From there, you can click Sending or Receiving tabs to configure your outgoing and incoming e-mail settings.

Initial configuration for text-based e-mail clients is described later in this chapter. Information you will need to configure your e-mail accounts is much the same for the different graphical e-mail clients covered in this chapter: ■

Name — Enter your name as you want it to appear on outgoing messages.

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Email Address — Enter the e-mail address from which you are sending. You may also be offered the opportunity to supply a different reply-to address, if you want replies to go to an address other than the one you sent from.

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Mail server type — Most mail servers are POP3- or IMAP-type servers. (Configuring those types of servers is discussed in Chapter 14.)

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Server names — Enter the names of the servers you will use to send outgoing e-mail and receive incoming e-mail. The names can be fully qualified domain names (such as mail .linuxtoys.net) or IP addresses. In many cases, the incoming and outgoing mail servers are the same.

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Username — Enter the name by which the mail server knows you. For example, if your e-mail address is [email protected], your username to the mail.linuxtoys.net server might simply be chris. However, it’s possible that your username on the mail server might be different, so you should find that out from the administrator of your mail server.

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Account title — Enter the name that you want to call this mail account so you can refer to it later in your list of mail and news group accounts.

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Authentication type — Indicate the type of authentication to use when you get your mail (sometimes authentication is needed to send your mail as well). Password authentication is normal. Usually you can have your e-mail client remember your password if you want. Typically, you are prompted for the password the first time you connect to get your mail.

That is most of the basic information you need to start getting and sending e-mail. However, you may want to further tune how your e-mail client interacts when it gets and sends e-mail.

Tuning Up E-Mail With your basic settings done, you should be ready to start sending and receiving your e-mail. Before you do, however, you should consider some of the other settings that can affect how you use mail: ■

Automatically check messages — You can set your e-mail client to automatically check and download your messages from the mail server every few minutes.

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Leave messages on server — If you turn this feature on for a POP server, your e-mail messages remain on the server after you have downloaded them to your e-mail client. People sometimes turn this feature on if they want to check their mail messages while they are on the road yet want to download their messages from their permanent desktop computer later.

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Certificates — Your e-mail client may provide a way of using certificates to sign your outgoing messages. For example, Evolution and SeaMonkey Mail both have Security tabs for your mail settings that let you enter information about your certificates and indicate that your e-mail be signed. You can also choose to use the certificates for encryption.

Step through your mail account settings because they are slightly different for each e-mail client.

Reading E-Mail with Thunderbird The Thunderbird e-mail client program is a full-featured mail and newsgroup reader that usually comes with most Linux systems. In the past, you may have run the integrated Mozilla suite of applications, now called Mozilla SeaMonkey. The more recent versions of Linux, however, have replaced SeaMonkey with separate e-mail and Web-browsing applications, Thunderbird and Firefox, respectively. If you are used to the older Mozilla suite, you should consider upgrading to Thunderbird.

NOTE

Thunderbird includes features for: ■

Sending, receiving, reading, and managing e-mail

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Managing multiple mail and newsgroup accounts

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Composing HTML e-mail messages

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Controlling junk e-mail

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Message encryption and signing

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

Thunderbird runs on Windows as well as Linux, so you can convert your organization to Thunderbird now, and then later migrate to Linux.

On most Linux systems, either Thunderbird or Evolution (covered following) will be the primary e-mail client for your Linux distribution. You can launch the e-mail application from the desktop from a menu such as Internet. For example, in Fedora, you run an e-mail client from the Applications ➪ Internet menu. Fedora defaults to Evolution as the primary e-mail client, so Evolution is listed simply as Email on the Application ➪ Internet menu. Thunderbird is listed as Thunderbird Email (if you install the thunderbird package).

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Setting Up an E-Mail Account When you launch Thunderbird for the first time, the application presents the New Account Setup dialog, which leads you through setting up an e-mail account (you can create more than one). Figure 6-1 shows this window. FIGURE 6-1 The Thunderbird New Account Setup wizard

Follow these steps that follow to create your e-mail account: 1. Create an e-mail account. To begin setting up an e-mail account, select Email Account and click Next. The Identity screen appears. 2. Identify yourself. Type in your name and the e-mail address that you want others to use to send e-mail to you and click Next. The Server Information screen appears. 3. Enter your server settings. For your incoming mail, indicate whether the mail server is a POP or IMAP server. Then type the server name (such as mail.example.com). If you want to keep the e-mail from different e-mail accounts separate (as opposed to having all messages stored in a Global Inbox), uncheck Global Inbox box. Finally, type the name of the server where your outgoing mail is sent (such as mail.example.com) and then select Next. The User Names screen appears. 4. Enter usernames. When you get (incoming) and send (outgoing) e-mail through your mail server, Thunderbird identifies you as a particular username to the server. Usually, that name is the same name used in your e-mail address. For example, if your complete e-mail address is [email protected], the incoming and outgoing username would probably be chris. Type in your incoming and outgoing username and click Next. The Account Name screen appears.

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5. Enter an account name. Type a name that you want to use to identify the account. This name is only used to help you remember which account it is and doesn’t have any effect on what is sent to the server. Thunderbird recommends names such as “Home Account” or “News Account.” Click Next to continue. 6. Finish the account setup. The Congratulations screen appears, which allows you to review your settings and complete the account. Figure 6-2 shows an example of the Congratulations screen. The check box lets you immediately download messages from the server, if you are ready to do that. Click Next to continue. FIGURE 6-2 Before creating your e-mail account, you can confirm all the settings.

Thunderbird is now ready to begin getting and sending mail messages. If you need to change any settings to the account you just set up (or change any of the defaults you have not had a chance to change), select Edit ➪ Account Settings from the Thunderbird window. With the Junk Mail feature, Thunderbird automatically tags any message it believes to be junk mail with a blue recycle-bin icon. Using the Junk toolbar, you train the Junk Mail feature by telling it when a message is or isn’t junk mail. After you have identified which messages are junk mail, you can automatically move incoming junk mail to the Junk folder.

TIP

Connecting to the Mail Server After you have set up your mail accounts in Thunderbird, you can explicitly ask to download any available mail messages from the server (for POP accounts). To do that, click the Get Mail button. You are prompted for the password for your account on the mail server. Using that password, Thunderbird downloads all your messages from the mail server. It downloads messages again every 10 minutes, or you can click the Get Mail button at any time.

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If you want to change how often mail is downloaded, or other features of your account, choose Edit ➪ Account Settings. Under the e-mail account you added are categories to change the setup and behavior of the account. (Click Server Settings to change how often, if at all, new messages are automatically downloaded from the mail server.)

Managing Incoming Mail Select the Inbox title in the left column. It shows how many messages are in your Inbox that have not been read. Your incoming messages appear to the right, with the headers on top and the currently selected message text below it. Figure 6-3 shows Thunderbird displaying some e-mail headers and the current message.

FIGURE 6-3 Manage incoming mail from the Thunderbird window.

There are various ways to store and manage e-mail messages in Thunderbird. Here’s a quick rundown of how to manage incoming mail: ■

Mail folders — Mail messages are stored in folders in the left column. There could be a separate heading for each mail account you have or you might have specified that Thunderbird use a global Inbox where messages from all accounts get placed in the same Inbox folder. For each mail account, incoming messages are stored (by default) in your Inbox folder. You can create additional folders to better keep track of your mail (right-click on Inbox, and select New Folder to add a folder). Other folders contain drafts of messages set aside for a time (Drafts), templates for creating messages (Templates), messages you have sent (Sent), and messages that you have discarded (Trash).

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Sort messages — Messages are sorted by date for the folder you select, in the upper-right corner of the display. Click the headings over the messages to sort by subject, sender, date or priority. The icon on the far right of the Subject header lets you choose what information

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columns to display for the message headers (such as recipient, size, status and so on). You can then sort on any of those columns. ■

Read messages — When you select a message, it appears in the lower-right corner of the display. Click the e-mail address from the sender, and a menu enables you to add that address to your address book, compose mail to that address, copy mail to that address, or create a filter from that message.

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Filter mail — When Thunderbird grabs your e-mail from the mail server, it drops it into the global Inbox or one associated with your mail account, by default. Thunderbird provides some nice features for checking each message for information you choose, and then acting on that message to move it to another folder, label it, or change its priority. See the “Filtering Mail and Catching Spam” section later in this chapter for details.

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Search messages — You can use the search feature to retrieve messages that are in one of your mail folders. With the folder you want to search being the current folder, type a word to search on into the Subject or Sender Contains box. Messages with sender names or subject lines that don’t contain that string will disappear from the list of messages. To do more detailed searches, choose Edit ➪ Find ➪ Search Messages.

Composing and Sending Mail To compose e-mail messages, you can either start from scratch or respond to an existing e-mail message. The following are some quick descriptions of how to create outgoing mail: ■

New messages — To create a new message, choose Message ➪ New Message (or click Write on the toolbar).

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Reply to messages — To reply to a mail message, click the message on the right side of your screen and then choose Message ➪ Reply (to reply only to the author of the message) or Message ➪ Reply to All (to reply to everyone listed as a recipient of the message).

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Forward messages — To forward a mail message, click the message on the right side of your screen and then choose Message ➪ Forward. You can also forward a message and have it appear in the text (Message ➪ Forward As ➪ Inline) or as an attachment (Message ➪ Forward As ➪ Attachment).

In each case, a Compose window appears, in which you compose your e-mail message. As you compose your message in the Compose window, you can use the following: ■

Address book — Add e-mail addresses from your personal address book (or from one of several different directory servers) by selecting Tools ➪ Address Book. Click the Contacts button to select recipients for your missive.

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Attachments — Add attachments such as a word processing file, image, or executable program by clicking the Attach button (or choosing File ➪ Attach ➪ File) and then selecting a file from your file system to attach. (You can also choose File ➪ Attach ➪ Web Page to choose the URL of a Web page that you want to attach.)

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Certificates — Add certificates or view security information about your mail message by selecting View ➪ Message Security Info.

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When you are finished composing the message, click Send to send the message. If you prefer, queue the message to be sent later by choosing File ➪ Send Later. (Send Later is useful if you are not currently online.) If you want to quit and finish the e-mail message later, choose File ➪ Save As ➪ Draft, and then click the X in the upper-right corner to close the window. When you are ready to resume work on the message, open the Draft folder in the Thunderbird window and double-click the message.

TIP

Filtering Mail and Catching Spam Thunderbird can do more with incoming messages than just place them in your Inbox. You can set up filters to check each message first and then have Thunderbird take an action you define when a message matches the rule you set up. For example, your filter can contain a rule that checks the subject, sender, text body, date, priority, status, recipients, or age in days of the message for a particular word, name, or date, as appropriate. If there is a match, you can have Thunderbird put that message in a particular folder, label it with a selected phrase, change its priority, or set its junk mail status. You can add as many rules as you like. For example, you can: ■

Have all messages sent from a particular address sorted into a separate mail folder. For example, I direct some mailing lists to a separate folder so that important mail doesn’t get lost when there’s a lot of activity on the mailing lists to which I subscribe.

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Mark incoming messages from important clients as having highest priority.

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Have messages from particular people or places that are being mistakenly marked as spam change their junk status to Not Junk.

To set up filter rules in Thunderbird, click Tools ➪ Message Filters. The Message Filters pop-up appears. If you have multiple mail accounts, select the account you want to filter. Then click New. From the Filter Rules pop-up window, choose the following: ■

For incoming messages that — There are different ways to check parts of a message. For example, you can check whether the Sender is in the address book. You can check what the Priority is: low, medium, or high. You can create multiple rules for a filter (click More to add another rule), and then choose if you want to match all or any of the rules to continue to the action.

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Perform these actions — The information in this section describes what to do with a message that matches the rules you’ve set. You can have the message moved to any existing folder, or label the message. With labels, the message appears in a different color depending on the label: important (red), work (orange), personal (green), to do (blue), or later (purple). You can also change the message priority.

Figure 6-4 shows a rule I created to have a star attached to mail from my friend Tweeks when it comes in.

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FIGURE 6-4 Create filter rules to sort or highlight your e-mail messages.

A nice feature of Thunderbird’s filtering rules is that you can apply the rules after the fact as well. If you decide you want to move all messages in your Inbox from a particular person to a different folder, for example, you can open the Message Filters window, create a rule to move the selected messages, select Inbox, and click Run Now. For junk mail, with a mail message selected, click the Junk button in the toolbar. The message is marked as junk. Your selection helps teach Thunderbird what you think is junk mail. Click Tools ➪ Run Junk Mail Controls on Folder, and Thunderbird looks for other messages that look like junk mail. (You can take the junk marker off of any message you think is not junk.) Then select Tools ➪ Delete Mail Marked as Junk in Folder, and the junk mail is deleted. To open a window to configure how you handle junk mail, select Tools ➪ Junk Mail Controls.

Managing E-Mail in Evolution If you are using Fedora, Ubuntu, or Debian, Evolution is the e-mail client that you can start right from the GNOME desktop (look for the envelope icon on the panel). Evolution is a groupware application, combining several types of applications that help groups of people communicate and work together. The features of Evolution include: ■

Mail — A complete set of features for getting, reading, managing, composing, and sending e-mail on one or more e-mail accounts.

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Contacts — Create contact information such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers for friends and associates. A Categories feature helps you remember who gets birthday and anniversary gifts.

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Calendar — Create and manage appointments on your personal calendar. You can e-mail appointment information to others and do keyword searches of your calendar.

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Memos — Write public, private, or confidential memos.

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Tasks — Organize ongoing tasks into folders.

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Evolution provides a default interface that looks a lot like that of Microsoft Outlook, making it easy for new users to make a smooth transition to a Linux system.

Other features recently added to Evolution include improved junk mail handling and Search Folders (for managing multiple physical folders as one folder).

Receiving, Composing, and Sending E-Mail Evolution offers a full set of features for sending, receiving, and managing your e-mail. Figure 6-5 shows an example of an Evolution window with the Inbox selected and ready to manage, compose, send, and receive e-mail.

FIGURE 6-5 Manage your e-mail from the Evolution Inbox.

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Here’s a quick rundown of common e-mail tasks: ■

Read e-mail — Click Inbox in the left column. Your messages appear to the right. Message headers are in the upper right; the current message is displayed in the lower pane. Doubleclick a message header to display it in a separate window

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Delete e-mail — After you have read a message, select it and press the Delete key. Click View ➪ Hide Deleted Messages to toggle whether you can see deleted messages. Click Folder ➪ Expunge to permanently remove all messages marked for deletion in the current folder.

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Send and receive — Click the Send/Receive button to send any e-mail queued to be sent and receive any e-mail waiting for you at your mail server. (You may not need to do this if Evolution is configured to download your messages every few minutes. Check Edit ➪ Preferences, and then double-click on your mail account. The Receiving Options tab indicates if automatic mail checking is being done.)

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Compose e-mail — Click New ➪ Mail Message. A Compose a Message window appears. Type your recipient’s e-mail address, enter a subject line, and fill in the body of the message. Click Send when you are finished. Buttons on the Compose window enable you to add attachments, cut and paste text, choose a format (HTML or plain text), and sign the message (if you have set up appropriate keys).

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Use address books — Click the Contacts button (or View ➪ Window ➪ Contacts menu choice) to see a list of names, addresses, and other contact information for the people in your address book. When you compose a message, click the To or CC button to select addresses from the book to add as recipients for your message.

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Create folders — If you like to keep old messages, you may want to save them outside your Inbox (so it won’t get too junked up). To create a folder in which to keep them, rightclick on the Inbox and select New Folder. You can choose to store the new folder as a subfolder to any existing folder. Type a folder name and click OK.

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Move messages — With new folders created, you can easily move messages from your Inbox to another folder. The easiest way is to simply drag-and-drop each message (or a set of selected messages) from the message pane to the new folder.

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Search messages — Type a keyword in the search box over your e-mail message pane and select whether to search your message subject lines, sender, recipient, or message body. Click Find Now to search for the keyword. After viewing the messages, click Clear to have the other messages reappear.

Managing E-Mail with Search Folders Managing large amounts of e-mail can become difficult when the messages you want to refer to span several folders, dates, or senders. With Search Folders (also called virtual folders or vFolders), you can identify criteria to group together messages from all your mail folders so you can deal with them in one Search Folder.

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Where have vFolders gone? Search Folders used to be called vFolders. If you are familiar with older versions of Evolution, note that the name changed to Search Folders.

Here’s a procedure for creating a Search Folder: 1. With Evolution open to read mail (click Inbox to get there), select File ➪ New ➪ Folder. A Create New Folder pop-up appears. 2. Select Search Folders, type a folder name (such as FromJohn), and select OK. A New Search Folder pop-up appears. 3. Click Add and select criteria for including a message in your Search Folder. You can search to see if the sender, recipient, subject, message body, or other part of the message contains or doesn’t contain the string you type in the next box. Click Add again if you want to add more criteria. 4. If you want to search only specific folders, click Add in the Search Folder Sources box and select the folder you want to search. You can repeat the Add to choose more than one folder. Otherwise, you can select to search all local folders, all active remote folders, or all local and active remote folders. Then click OK. 5. Make sure the folder bar is visible (View ➪ Layout ➪ Show Side Bar). The folder you just created is listed under the Search Folders heading. Click that folder to see the messages you gathered with this action.

At this point, you can work with the messages you gathered in the Search Folder. Although it appears that there are multiple versions of each message across your mail folders, there is really only one copy of each. So deleting or moving the message from a Search Folder actually causes it to be deleted or moved from the original folder in which the real message resides.

TIP

You can also create a Search Folder by performing a search, a sort of query by example. Select Search ➪ Create Search Folder from the Search menu and enter your search

criteria.

Filtering E-Mail Messages You can take action on an e-mail message before it even lands in your Inbox. Click Message ➪ Create Rule, and then select the type of filter to create. Evolution shows a Filters window to enable you to add filters to deal with incoming or outgoing messages. Click Add to create criteria and set actions. For example, you can have all messages from a particular sender, subject, date, status, or size sorted to a selected folder. Or you can have messages matching your criteria deleted or assigned a color, or play a sound clip. Evolution also supports many common features, such as printing, saving, and viewing e-mail messages in various ways. The help system that comes with Evolution (click the Help button) includes a good manual, FAQ, and service for reporting bugs.

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Reading E-Mail with SeaMonkey Mail The SeaMonkey Mail client program is a full-featured mail and newsgroup reader that comes with the SeaMonkey suite on many Linux systems. In general, the SeaMonkey suite is based on the older Mozilla suite, which was replaced by Thunderbird e-mail and Firefox Web browser clients. Thunderbird and Firefox were split from the large Mozilla suite and each now runs as a separate application. If you are used to the older Mozilla suite, now called SeaMonkey, you should consider upgrading to Thunderbird. In most respects, SeaMonkey Mail works like Thunderbird, described previously. The major difference is that SeaMonkey Mail, because it is an older application, won’t have all the features of the latest Thunderbird. This is a big change. In the last year or so, Thunderbird has all but replaced SeaMonkey Mail. In many Linux distributions you can simply install the seamonkey package to get the entire SeaMonkey Suite (Web browser, Mail client, Composer, Address Book, and IRC Chat client). If SeaMonkey is not available with your Linux distribution, you can download the Mozilla SeaMonkey suite from www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/. Figure 6-6 shows an example of the SeaMonkey mail window. FIGURE 6-6 Manage mail and newsgroups with SeaMonkey.

Working with Text-Based E-Mail Readers The first text-based mail clients could be configured quite simply. Mail clients such as mutt, mail, or pine were often run with the user logged in to the computer that was acting as the mail server. So instead of downloading the messages, using POP3 or IMAP, the mail client would simply open the mailbox (often under the user’s name in /var/spool/mail) and begin working with mail.

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There are many text-based mail programs for reading, sending, and working with your mail. Many of these programs have been around for a long time, so they are full of features and have been well debugged. As a group, however, they are not very intuitive. Most of these programs use the value of your $MAIL environment variable as your local mailbox. Usually, that location is /var/spool/mail/user, where user is your username. If you use Thunderbird but want to try out one of the text-based e-mail clients, you can set your $MAIL so that it points to your Thunderbird mailbox. This will enable you to use either Thunderbird or a text-based mail program. Add the following line to one of your startup files:

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export MAIL=$HOME/.thunderbird/*.default/*/Mail/accountname/Inbox Replace accountname in the command with the name of an e-mail account you set up. If you usually use Thunderbird for mail, set this variable temporarily to try out some of these mail programs.

Mail readers described in the following sections are text-based and use the entire Terminal window (or other shell display). Although some features are different, menu bars show available options right on the screen.

Mutt Mail Reader The mutt command is a text-based, full-screen mail user agent for reading and sending e-mail. The interface is quick and efficient. Type mutt to start the program. Move arrow keys up and down to select from your listed messages. Press Enter to see a mail message, and type i to return to the Main menu. The menu bar indicates how to mark messages for deletion, undelete them, save messages to a directory, and reply to a message. Type m to compose a new message, and it opens your default editor (vi, for example) to create the message. Type y to send the message. If you want to read mail without having your fingers leave your keyboard, mutt is a nice choice. (It even handles attachments!)

Pine Mail Reader The pine mail reader is another full-screen mail reader, but it offers many more features than does mutt. With pine, you can manage multiple mail folders and newsgroup messages as well as mail messages. As text-based applications go, pine is quite easy to use. It was developed by a group at the University of Washington for use by students on campus, but has become widely used in UNIX and Linux environments. Start this mail program by typing pine. After a brief startup message that invites you to count yourself as a pine user, you should see the following menu, from which you can select items by typing the associated letter or using up and down arrows and pressing Enter: ? C I L A S Q

HELP COMPOSE MESSAGE MESSAGE INDEX FOLDER LIST ADDRESS BOOK SETUP QUIT

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Get help using Pine Compose and send a message View messages in current folder Select a folder to view Update address book Configure Pine Options Leave the Pine program

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To read your e-mail, select either I or L. Commands are listed along the bottom of the screen and change to suit the content you are viewing. Use the left (←) and right (→) arrow keys to step backward and forward among the pine screens.

Mail Reader The mail command was the first mail reader for UNIX. It is text-based, but not screen-oriented. Type mail, and you will see the messages in your mailbox. You get a prompt after message headings are displayed — you are expected to know what to do next. (You can use the Enter key to step through messages.) Type ? to see which commands are available. While in mail, type h to see mail headings again. Simply type a message number to see the message. Type d# (replacing # with a message number) to delete a message. To create a new message, type m. To respond to a message, type r# (replacing # with the message number).

Choosing a Web Browser Many Web browsers available in Linux are based on the Mozilla Web browser engine, called Gecko. Web browsers that might come with your Linux distribution include: ■

Firefox — This is the leading Web browser for Linux and other open source software systems. There are versions of Firefox available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Firefox has made inroads into the Mac and Windows worlds as well. This next generation browser from the Mozilla project is designed to be fast, efficient, and safe for Web browsing.

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SeaMonkey Web Browser — Offered as part of the SeaMonkey suite, this Web browser is based on Mozilla Navigator, which was once the most popular open source Web browser. Although no longer actively developed by the Mozilla project, the SeaMonkey suite remains available with many Linux systems. Some people still install SeaMonkey for its easy-to-use HTML composer window.

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Konqueror — Comes as the default browser with many KDE desktop environments. Konqueror is a file manager as well as a Web browser and helps bring together many features of the KDE desktop.

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Opera — A commercial application that runs on many small devices such as mobile phones or the Nokia Linux–based Internet Tablet, this browser is available for free on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Because it is not open source, however, it is not redistributed with most major Linux systems.

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links, lynx, and w3m — If you are in a text-based environment (operating from the shell), these are among several text-based Web browsers you can try out.

Some streamlined Linux versions, such as Damn Small Linux, include a very lightweight Web browser called dillo (www.dillo.org). Although its small size (only about 350KB binary) comes with some limitations (such as limited font and internationalization support), dillo is a good choice for displaying basic HTML on handheld devices and mini Linux distributions. Another small-footprint browser is minimo (www.mozilla.org/projects/minimo/), short for mini-Mozilla.

NOTE

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The following sections describe SeaMonkey, Firefox, and some text-based Web browsers that are available with many Linux systems.

Exploring the SeaMonkey Suite During the early 1990s, Netscape Navigator was the most popular Web browser. When it became apparent that Netscape was losing its lead to Microsoft Internet Explorer, its source code was released to the world as open source code. Mozilla.org (www.mozilla.org) was formed to coordinate the development of a new browser from that code. The result was the Mozilla browser that was included with most Linux distributions. The availability on multiple platforms was great, especially if you must switch between Linux and Windows—for example, using Windows at work and Linux at home. Mozilla looked and acted the same on many platforms. With the focus of Mozilla project development turning to Firefox and Thunderbird, as mentioned earlier, the suite changed its name to SeaMonkey. In addition to viewing Web pages, you can also manage e-mail, newsgroups, IRC, and address books, and even create your own Web pages with SeaMonkey Composer. Slackware, kept SeaMonkey so that the project could offer the SeaMonkey Composer. The Slackware project noted that SeaMonkey Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor that is still used by many open source enthusiasts as an alternative to Microsoft FrontPage for ease-of-use Web page development.

NOTE

In addition to the SeaMonkey browser, the SeaMonkey suite also includes the following features: ■

Mail and Newsgroups — A full-featured program for sending, receiving, and managing e-mail, as well as for using newsgroups. (The seamonkey RPM or deb package must be installed.) SeaMonkey Mail has mostly been replaced by the Thunderbird application, covered previously.

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IRC Chat — An Internet Relay Chat (IRC) window, called ChatZilla, for participating in online, typed conversations. (The mozilla-chat package must be installed.)

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Composer — A Web page (HTML) composer application.

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Address Book — A feature to manage names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other contact information. This is also part of Thunderbird.

Figure 6-7 shows examples of the Browser and Composer windows available with the SeaMonkey suite.

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FIGURE 6-7 SeaMonkey includes a browser, composer, and other Intenet clients from the old Mozilla suite.

Using Firefox Most Linux distributions ship Firefox as the default browser. In many desktop Linux distributions, you start the Firefox Web browser from an icon on the top panel or on an Applications menu. For example, in Debian, select Applications ➪ Internet ➪ Firefox Web Browser. If you don’t see it on a menu, you can start Firefox by simply typing firefox from a Terminal window. In 2008, a major new version of Firefox was released: Firefox 3. It included some extraordinary new features for ease-of-use, security, and performance. Many of those features are described in the following section. The Firefox project page (www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) is shown in a Firefox 3 browser in Figure 6-8.

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FIGURE 6-8 Firefox is the leading open source Web browser, with thousands of improvements for Firefox 3.

If you have been using Firefox for a while, but are new to Firefox 3, there are many new features you may find interesting. Inside Firefox 3 is the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, with thousands of features to improve performance, rendering, and stability. You should notice improvements in color management and fonts. One improvement that connects you to several new features in Firefox 3 is the location box. Figure 6-9 shows several location box examples that illustrate new ways of dealing with the Web sites you request.

FIGURE 6-9 Do site verification and create bookmarks from the location box.

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In Figure 6-9, the example on the left shows what happens when you click the icon on the left side of the location box when visiting a secured site. You can see that Verisign verifies the authenticity of the site and that communications are encrypted. The example on the right shows that by selecting the star on the right side of the Location box, you can work with bookmark information for a page and modify that information. Other icons that might appear in the Location box include a variety of security warnings, such as warnings for possible forged or dangerous content. Firefox has all the basic features you need in a Web browser plus a few special features. The following sections describe how to get the most out of your Firefox Web browser. COMING FROM

WINDOWS

For help transitioning from Internet Explorer to Firefox, see the Firefox site at www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/switch.html.

Setting Up Firefox There are many things you can do to configure Firefox to run like a champ. The following sections describe some ways to customize your browsing experience in Firefox.

Setting Firefox Preferences You can set your Firefox preferences in the Preferences window (see Figure 6-10). To open Firefox preferences, select Edit ➪ Preferences.

FIGURE 6-10 Change settings for navigating the Web from Firefox’s Preferences window.

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If you are upgrading from the Mozilla suite or an earlier Firefox release, you will notice that the Preferences window looks completely different. Don’t despair, however; the browser preferences have not changed much. The latest Firefox just has a simpler window layout.

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The following are some Firefox preferences that you might want to change: ■

Main — Lets you choose which pages to display when you start Firefox. It also lets you choose how to handle downloads and change add-on preferences.

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Tabs — Use these selections to control how Firefox uses tabs, one of the most useful features of this browser.

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Content — Set Content preferences to control how Firefox should deal with requests for different types of Web content. These options include: ■

Pop-up windows — Choose whether or not to block pop-up windows.

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Java and JavaScript — You can control whether these languages are enabled.

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Images — Choose whether or not to load images automatically. (Useful for small screens or low-bandwidth network connections.)

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Fonts & Colors — Select the default font type and size, as well as the colors used for text, background, visited links, and unvisited links.

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Language — For Web pages that can appear in multiple languages, this sets the order in which you would prefer languages to be displayed. For example, you might choose English/United States, English, French, and German. Then Firefox tries to display a Web page you open in each of those languages successively, until one is matched. You can set other advanced features on this tab.

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Applications — View, search, and change which applications are used to display different types of content that might be encountered during browsing.

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Privacy — Choose how long to store a history of addresses of the sites you have typed in your location bar. (These addresses appear in the History tab on the Firefox sidebar.) Set Privacy preferences to control how Firefox caches private data and allows Web sites to find out information about you in cookies. These preferences include: ■

Cookies — The Web content you choose can try to open, move, resize, raise, and lower windows. It can request to change your images, status bar text, or bits of information stored in what are called cookies. These preferences let you restrict what the content you request can do.

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Private Data — Storing your history of browsing and downloading, forms and searches, visited pages, cookies, passwords, and authenticated sessions can simplify your browsing experience. However, if you are working on someone else’s machine or otherwise don’t want to leave a record of your browsing behind, you can clear that information with the Clear Now button. You can also select the setting button to indicate what information you want to clear when Clear Now is selected.

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Security — The Security preferences tab in Firefox 3 lets you select to be warned if a site you are visiting is a suspected attach site or forgery. You can also select to be warned when a site tries to install add-ons. Other settings on this tab let you choose to remember passwords you enter for sites (so you don’t have to type them every time you visit) or choose to keep a master password.

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Advanced — The Advanced tabs include many features that you probably won’t use every day. From the General tab, you can set accessibility features and browsing features. The Network tab lets you set up special network connections to use with Firefox (such as proxy settings) or configure an offline storage cache. From the Update tab, you can automatically check for Firefox updates. On the Encryption tab, you can choose the security protocols (SSL and TLS) and personal certificates to use when a site requests that information.

Adding Add-ons and Plug-ins Add-ons extend the features in Firefox to personalize how you use your browser. Dozens of add-ons are available to help you manage and search your Web content more efficiently, handle downloads, work with news feeds, and interact with social networks. Plug-ins are special applications you can add to handle data that Firefox can’t work with by default (such as special image or audio files). To find out about available add-ons and plug-ins, select Tools ➪ Add-ons from the Firefox window to see the Add-ons pop-up window. Figure 6-11 shows an example of that window.

FIGURE 6-11 Select add-ons to Firefox to manage content in different ways.

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Select the link to see recommended add-ons from the Firefox Add-ons page. You can see reviews and ratings of each add-on, how often it is downloaded, and screenshots of how the add-on appears. Here are a few examples of popular Firefox add-ons: ■

FoxyTunes — With FoxyTunes (www.foxytunes.com) installed, you can use any of more than a dozen music players to play music as you browse the Web. It also helps you find covers, videos, lyrics, biographies, and other information about the artists you play.

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FireGestures — With FireGestures, you can map different mouse gestures to launch scripts or perform actions that you set.

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ColorfulTabs — The ColorfulTabs add-on lets you set your Firefox browser tabs to different colors. Colors can be set in a variety of ways (such as at random or by domain name). Change settings from the Extensions tab of the Add-ons window.

After you have installed an add-on, you need to restart Firefox for it to take effect. In some cases, a change to an extension’s option will also require you to restart Firefox. If you want to uninstall an add-on or change an add-on’s options, select Tools ➪ Extensions from Firefox. Select the Extensions tab. This displays the add-ons you have installed and offers buttons to disable, uninstall, or change preferences. Plug-ins are applications you add to your browser to play particular types of content. Usually you do this because either Firefox doesn’t include the feature you want or you want to use a different application to play the content (such as your own music player). Many plug-ins are already packaged by their creators or by third-party repositories for popular Linux distributions. For example, some multimedia plug-ins for Fedora are available from the rpm.livna.org repository, while Ubuntu and Debian might have the same plug-ins packaged in repositories labeled as non-free. The Firefox Plug-ins sidebar describes some popular plug-ins for Firefox.

Firefox Plug-ins

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any plug-ins are available for use in most Linux versions of Firefox. To see a list of plug-ins that are already installed in your browser, enter about:plugins in the address box where you normally type URLs.

Go to https://addons.mozilla.org/ and select Plugins to view and download the most popular plug-ins, and look at plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html for links to other plug-ins. Some of the most popular plug-ins are: ■ Adobe Reader Plug-in (www.adobe.com/support/downloads) — Displays files in Adobe Systems’

PDF (Portable Document Format). ■ DjVuLibre Plug-in (djvu.sourceforge.net) — Displays images in DjVu image compression tech-

nology. This plug-in is from AT&T. ■ Real Player (www.real.com/linux) — Plays Real Audio and Video content. Real Networks and its open

source Helix project have recently made RealVideo codecs available to the Linux community. continued

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continued ■ Adobe Flash Plug-in (www.adobe.com/downloads) — Flash is the most popular player for playing

video on the Web. Some Linux systems come with an open source Flash player installed, but most agree that the Adobe version works better so far. ■ CrossOver Plugin (www.codeweavers.com) — Linux plug-ins are not yet available for some of the

more interesting and popular plug-ins. QuickTime movies, Shockwave Director multimedia content, and various Microsoft movie, file, and data formats simply will not play natively in Firefox. Using software built on WINE for Linux on x86-based processors, CodeWeavers created the CrossOver Plugin. Although no longer offered as a separate product (you must buy the entire Crossover Office product for $39.95 US), the CrossOver Plugin lets you play some content that you could not otherwise use in Linux. (Download a demo from www.codeweavers.com/site/products/download_trial and choose CrossOver Linux.)

After you install the CrossOver Plugin, you see a nice Plugin Setup window that lets you selectively install plug-ins for QuickTime, Windows Media Player, Shockwave, Flash, iTunes, and Lotus Notes, as well as Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint viewers. (Support for later versions of these content formats may be available by the time you read this.) You can also install other multimedia plug-ins, as well as a variety of fonts to use with those plug-ins.

Changing Firefox Themes Several themes are available for changing the look and feel of your Firefox window. From the Firefox Add-ons site (http://addons.mozilla.org), select Themes. When you download a theme for Firefox, it knows that it is a Firefox theme and, on the download window, it gives you the option to install the theme by clicking the Use Theme button. To change a theme later or get more themes, select Tools ➪ Add-ons and select the Themes tab. After you have installed a new theme, you need to restart Firefox for the new theme to take effect.

Securing Firefox Security has been one of the strongest reasons for people to switch to Firefox. By prohibiting the most unsafe types of content from playing in Firefox, and by warning you of potentially dangerous or annoying content before displaying it, Firefox has become the Web browser of choice for many securityconscious people. Here are some ways that Firefox helps make your Web browsing more secure: ■

ActiveX — Because of major security flaws found in ActiveX, Firefox will simply not play ActiveX content. Although there have been projects to try to provide ActiveX support in Mozilla, none of those projects are being actively developed.

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Pop-ups — When pop-up windows are encountered as you browse with Firefox, a message (by default) tells you that “Firefox prevented this site from opening a popup window.” By clicking on that message, you have an opportunity to allow all pop-ups from that site, just allow the requested pop-up, or edit your pop-up settings.

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Privacy preferences — From the Privacy window in Firefox (select Edit ➪ Preferences, and then click the Privacy button), you can clear stored private information from your

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browser in a single click. This is a particularly good feature if you have just used a computer that is not yours to browse the Web. You can select to individually clear your History, information saved in forms you might have filled in, any passwords saved by the browser, history of what you have downloaded, cookies, and cached files. As an alternative, you can click Clear Now and clear all that information from Firefox in one click. ■

Web forgeries — The latest Firefox release helps you block forged Web sites by displaying a “Suspected Web Forgery” pop-up message when it encounters a page that has been reported as forged. You can choose to not display the page or ignore the warning. If you suspect a forged page that doesn’t display that message, select Help ➪ Report Web Forgery to try to add the page to the Google Web Forgery list.

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Certificates — In Firefox, you can install and manage certificates that can be used for validating a Web site and safely performing encryption of communications to that site. Using the Preferences window (select Edit ➪ Preferences and then click the Advanced button), you can manage certificates under the Encryption tab, Certificates heading. Select View Certificates to display a window that lets you import new certificates or view certificates that are already installed. Firefox will check that certificates you encounter are valid (and warn you if they are not).

Along with all the excellent security features built into Firefox, it’s important that you incorporate good security practices in your Web browsing. Here are some general tips for safe Web browsing: ■

Download and install software only from sites that are secure and known to you to be safe.

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For any online transactions, make sure you are communicating with a secure site (look for the https protocol in the location box and the closed lock icon in the lower-right corner of the screen).

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Be careful about being redirected to another Web site when doing a financial transaction. An IP address in the site’s address or misspellings on a screen where you enter credit card information are warning signs that you have been directed to an untrustworthy site.

Because new exploits are being discovered all the time, it’s important that you keep your Web browser up-to-date. That means that, at the least, you need to get updates of Firefox from the Linux distribution you are using or directly from Mozilla.org. To keep up on the latest security news and information about Firefox and other Mozilla products, refer to the Mozilla Security Center (www.mozilla.org/security/).

Tips for Using Firefox There are so many nice features in Firefox, it’s hard to cover all of them. Just to point you toward a few more fun and useful features, here are some tips for using Firefox: ■

Add smart keywords — Many Web sites include their own search boxes to allow you to look for information on their sites. With Firefox, you can assign a smart keyword to any search box on the Web, and then use that keyword from the location bar in the Firefox browser to search that site.

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For example, go to the Linux Documentation Project site (http://tldp.org). Right-click in the Search/Resources search box. Select Add a Keyword for this Search from the menu that appears. Add a name (Linux Documentation) and a keyword (tldp) and select Add to add the keyword to your Bookmarks. After you have added the keyword, you can use it by simply entering the keyword and one or more search terms to the Firefox location box (on the navigation toolbar). For example, I entered tldp Lego Mindstorms and came up with a list of HOWTOs for using Lego Mindstorms in Linux. ■

Check config — Firefox has hundreds of configuration preferences available to set as you please. You can see those options by typing about:config into the location box. Casual users should look at these settings, but not change them (because you can do irreparable harm to Firefox if you make a wrong selection). If you feel secure about making changes, for true/false options, you can click on the preference name to toggle it between the two values. For other preferences, click the preference to enter a value into a pop-up box. While many of these values can be changed through the Preferences menu (Edit ➪ Preferences), some technical people prefer to look at settings in a list like the one shown on the about:config page.

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Multiple home pages — Instead of just having one home page, you can have a whole set of home pages. When you start Firefox, a separate tab will open in the Firefox window for each address you identify in your home page list. To do this, create multiple tabs (File ➪ New Tab) and enter the address for each page you want in your list of home pages. Then select Edit ➪ Preferences ➪ Main and click the Use Current Pages button. The next time you open Firefox, it will start with the selected tabs open to the home pages you chose. (Clicking the Home icon will open new tabs for all the home pages.) You can also manually enter multiple URLs into the text box. Separate each URL with a pipe character (|).

Using Firefox Controls If you have used a Web browser before, the Firefox controls are probably as you might expect: location box, forward and back buttons, file and edit menus, and so on. There are a few controls with Firefox, however, that you might not be used to seeing: ■

Display Sidebar — Select View ➪ Sidebar to toggle the bookmarks or history sidebars on and off. The sidebar is a left column on your Firefox screen for allowing quick access to Bookmarks and History. Use the Bookmarks tab to add your own bookmarks and the History tab to return to pages on your history list.

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Send Web Content — You can send an e-mail containing the URL of the current Web page (File ➪ Send Link) to selected recipients. Firefox will load your default e-mail client such as Thunderbird or Evolution to send the e-mail message.

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Search the Internet — You can search the Internet for a keyword phrase in many different ways. Choose Tools ➪ Web Search to start a search. Selecting this menu choice moves the mouse cursor to the search box, where you can enter search terms. Click the icon on

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the left side of this box to choose search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and others. Select Manage Search Engines to select other search sites to use. Press the Enter key to search. ■

View Web Page Info — You can view information about the location of a Web page, the location of each of its components, the dates the page was modified, and other information by clicking the right mouse button over a Web page and then choosing View Page Info. In the Page Info window, click the Links tab to see links on that page to other content on the Web. Click the Security tab to see information about verification and encryption used on the page.

Improving Firefox Browsing Not every Web site you visit with Firefox is going to play well. Some sites don’t follow standards— they use unreadable fonts, choose colors that make it hard to see, or demand that you use a particular type of browser to view their content. To improve your browsing experience, there are several things you can add to Firefox. If you encounter a problem with Firefox that you can’t overcome, I recommend that you refer to the Mozilla Bugzilla database (www.mozilla.org/bugs/). This site is an excellent place to search for bugs others have found (many times you can get workarounds to your problems) or enter a bug report yourself.

NOTE

Did you ever run into a Web page that required you to use a particular type or version of a browser or had fonts or colors that made a page unreadable? The Firefox preferences toolbar called PrefBar4 enables you to try to spoof Web sites into thinking you are running a different browser. It also lets you choose settings that might improve colors, fonts, and other attributes on difficult-to-read pages. You can install the neat little toolbar from the Mozdev.org site (http://prefbar.mozdev.org). Click the Install link, and after it is installed, restart Firefox. The default set of buttons lets you do the following: ■

Colors — Change between default colors and those set on the Web page.

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Images — Toggle between having images loaded or not loaded on pages you display.

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JavaScript — Allow or disallow JavaScript content to play in Firefox.

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Flash — Allow or refuse all embedded Flash content on the current page.

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Clear Cache — Delete all cached content from memory and disk.

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Save Page — Save the current page and, optionally, its supporting images and other content, to your hard disk.

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Real UA — Choose to have your browser identified as itself (current version of Firefox) or any of the following: Mozilla 1.0 (in Windows 98), Netscape Navigator 4.7 (in Macintosh), Netscape 6.2 (in Linux), Internet Explorer 5.0 (in Macintosh), Internet Explorer 6.0 (in Windows XP), or Lynx (a text-based Web browser).

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The user agent (UA) setting is very useful when you’re dealing with Web sites that require Internet Explorer (IE) (and usually IE on Windows, not Mac OS). The IE 6.0 WinXP setting is good enough to allow Firefox to log on to the Microsoft Exchange webmail service, which is usually set up to require IE. If you want to run Linux in a mostly Windows organization, install the Preferences toolbar. Click the Customize button to add other buttons to the toolbar. You can add buttons to clear your History or Location bar entries. You can even add a Popups button to prevent a page from opening a pop-up window from Firefox. Many of the preferences take effect immediately. Others may require you to restart Firefox.

Doing Cool Things with Firefox Some neat bells and whistles are built into Firefox that can make your browsing more pleasant. The following sections explore a few of those features.

Blocking Pop-ups You can block annoying pop-up windows using the Firefox Preferences window. Here’s how: 1. Click Edit ➪ Preferences. The Preferences window appears. 2. Click Block Pop-up Windows under the Content category.

By blocking all pop-ups you might keep some Web sites from working properly. Click the Exceptions button to allow pop-ups on certain sites that you choose.

Using Tabbed Browsing If you switch back and forth among several Web pages, you can use the tabbed browsing feature to hold multiple pages in your browser window at once. You can open a new tab for browsing by simply selecting File ➪ New Tab or by pressing Ctrl+T. You can open any link into a new tab by rightclicking over the link and then selecting Open Link in New Tab. You can also tailor how tabbed browsing works from a Web page or from the Location box. Here’s how: 1. Click Edit ➪ Preferences. The Preferences window appears. 2. Click the Tabs tab. 3. Click the tab-related options you desire.

A tab for each tabbed page appears at the top of the Firefox pane. To close a tab, create a new tab, bookmark a group of tabs, or reload tabs, right-click one of the tabs and choose the function you want from the drop-down menu. One of the easiest ways to open a link in a tab is to right-click over a link on an HTML page. Select the Open Link in New Tab choice.

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6

Resizing Web Page Text There is a nice keyboard shortcut that lets you quickly resize the text on most Web pages in Firefox. Hold the Ctrl key and press the plus (+) or minus (–) key. In most cases, the text on the Web page gets larger or smaller, respectively. That page with the insanely small type font is suddenly readable. There are many more things you can do with Firefox than I have covered in this chapter. If you have questions about Firefox features or you just want to dig up some more cool stuff about Firefox, I recommend checking out the MozillaZine forum for Firefox support: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=38

This page has a sticky link to Miscellaneous Firefox Tips and a good FAQ post.

Using Text-Based Web Browsers If you become a Linux administrator or power user, over time you will inevitably find yourself working on a computer from a remote login or where there is no desktop GUI available. At some point while you are in that state, you will want to check an HTML file or a Web page. To solve the problem, many Linux distributions include several text-based Web browsers. With text-based Web browsers, any HTML file available from the Web, your local file system, or a computer where you’re remotely logged in can be accessed from your shell. There’s no need to fire up your GUI or read pages of HTML markup if you just want to take a peek at the contents of a Web page. In addition to enabling you to call up Web pages, move around with those pages, and follow links to other pages, some of browsers even display graphics right in a Terminal window! Which browser you use is a matter of which you are more comfortable with. Browsers that are available include: ■

links — You can open a file or a URL, and then traverse links from the pages you open. Use search forward (/string) and back (?string) features to find text strings in pages. Use up and down arrows to go forward and back among links. Press Enter to go to the current link. Use the right and left arrow keys to go forward and back among pages you have visited. Press Esc to see a menu bar of features from which to select.

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lynx — The lynx browser has a good set of help files (press the ? key). Step through pages using the spacebar. Although lynx can display pages containing frames, it cannot display them in the intended positioning. Use the arrow keys to display the selected link (right arrow), go back to the previous document (left arrow), select the previous link (up arrow), and select the next link (down arrow).

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w3m — This browser can display HTML pages containing text, links, frames, and tables. It even tries to display images (although it is a bit shaky). Both English and Japanese help files are available (press H with w3m running). You can also use w3m to page through an HTML document in plain text (for example, cat index.html | w3m -T text/html). Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to page through a document. Press Enter on a link to go to that link. Press B to go back to the previous link. Search forward and back for text using the / (slash) and ? (question mark) keys, respectively.

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The w3m seems the most sophisticated of these browsers. It features a nice default font selection and seems to handle frames neatly; its use of colors also makes it easy to use. The links browser lets you use the mouse to cut and paste text. You can start any of these text-based Web browsers by entering a filename, or if you have an active connection to the network, you can use a Web address as an option to the command name. For example, to read the w3m documentation (which is in HTML format) with a w3m browser, type the following from a Terminal window or other shell interface: $ w3m /usr/share/doc/w3m*/MANUAL.html

An HTML version of the W3M Manual is displayed. Or you can give w3m a URL to a Web page, such as the following: $ w3m www.handsonhistory.com

After a page is open, you can begin viewing the page and moving around to links included in it. Start by using the arrow keys to move around and select links. Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to page through text.

Summary A number of high-quality applications are available to fulfill your needs for a Web browser and e-mail client in Linux. Most Web browsers are based on the Mozilla gecko engine (which came originally from Netscape Navigator). Firefox has become the main Linux Web browser. The combination of security, ease-of-use features, and extensions has made Firefox an extremely popular Web browser for both Linux and Windows users. Graphical and text-based e-mail clients include Evolution, SeaMonkey Mail, and KMail. Thunderbird has become the next-generation e-mail client to replace SeaMonkey Mail. Text-based mail clients include mail, mutt, and pine.

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E

very type of PC gaming is available now with Linux. Whether you are looking for a solitaire game to fill time or a full-blown online 3D gaming experience, you will have dozens (or hundreds) of choices on the Linux desktop.

IN THIS CHAPTER Gaming in Linux Playing open source games

Although some companies, such as ID Software (Quake) and Epic Games (Unreal Tournament) have done work to port their games to Linux, others have used third-party developers (such as RuneSoft) to port commercial games to Linux. Independent games developers, such as Frictional Games (http://frictionalgames.com) and Introversion Software (www.introversion.co.uk) are now producing high-quality gaming experiences in Linux. Linux clients for commercial online gaming, such as EVE Online (www.eve-online.com), are also available.

Running commercial Linux games Playing Windows games in Linux

This chapter provides an overview of the state of Linux gaming today. It describes games that were created specifically to run in Linux, and explains how to find commercial games that run in Linux (either with a Linux version or running a Windows version along with Windows compatibility software, such as Cedega).

Jumping into Linux Gaming If you have a Linux system running and want to get started playing a game right now, here are some suggestions: ■

Check the Games menu — Most Linux desktop systems come with a bunch of games already installed. If you are running either a GNOME or KDE desktop in Linux, select Applications ➪ Games from the panel. You should be able to select a variety of arcade,

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card, board, tactics, and other games to keep you busy for a while. (KDE and GNOME games are described later in this chapter.) ■

Games packaged for your Linux distribution — Many of the most popular open source games are packaged to run on your Linux distribution. In Fedora, open the Add/Remove Software (PackageKit) window and select Games to see a list of more than 200 games you can download and play. In Ubuntu, the Add/Remove Applications window shows more than 300 games on the Games menu to download and play.

■

Other open source games — If the open source game you want is not packaged for your distribution, try going to the game’s project site to get the game. There are Internet sites that contain lists of games, and links to each game’s site. The Wikipedia Linux Gaming page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_gaming) and The Linux Game Tome (http:// happypenguin.org) are good places to start.

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Commercial Windows games — The latest commercial computer games are not all ported to run in Linux. Boxed commercial games for Linux include Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, as well as about 50 first-rate commercial games that have been ported to run in Linux. Using Cedega software from Transgaming.com, you can get hundreds more commercial Windows games to run. To see if the game you want is verified to run in Cedega, visit the Transgaming.Org Games Database (http://transgaming.org/gamesdb). Commercial Linux games are described in more depth later in this chapter.

Before you can play some of the more demanding 3D games, you need to check that your hardware can handle the games. Some games requiring support for 3D hardware acceleration need more RAM, faster processors, and particular video cards to run in Linux. Issues for setting up a gaming machine in Linux are described later in this chapter. Here is a quick list of games that are available on Fedora and many other Linux distributions that you can try out. I’ve listed them in the order of simple-and-addicting to more-complex-andaddicting: ■

Frozen Bubble (www.frozen-bubble.org) — The Frozen Bubble game is often mentioned as the most addictive Linux Game. Shoot up frozen bubbles and colored groups of bubbles as they slowly descend on you. Clear bubbles in sets of three or more until they are all gone (or come down and freeze you). The game can be played with multiple players. (Install the frozen-bubble package and select it from the Games menu.)

■

Gweled (http://sebdelestaing.free.fr/gweled) — In this clone of the popular Bejeweled game, exchange two jewels on the board to match three or more jewels (vertically or horizontally). (Install the gweled package and select Gweled from the Games menu.)

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WarZone 2100 (www.warzone2100.strategyplanet.gamespy.com) — This 1999 real-time strategy game was released in open source in 2004. Build a base from which you design and build vehicles and weapons, set up structures, and research new technologies to fight a global war. (Install the warzone2100 package and select Warzone 2100 from the Games menu.)

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■

Quake III Arena (ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/) — Several first-person shooter games in the Quake series are available for download from id Software. In Fedora, install the quake3 package and select Quake III Arena. The application that starts up lets you download a demo version of the Quake III. Read and accept the licensing terms to download the data files and begin playing Quake III Arena demo.

■

Vega Strike (http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net) — Explore the universe in this 3D action, space simulation game. Accept missions to transport cargo, become a bounty hunter, or patrol space. In this 3D environment, you can chat with bartenders or watch news broadcasts to keep up with events in the universe. (To play this game in Fedora, install the vegastrike package and select Vega Strike from the Games menu.)

7

Figure 7-1 shows small screen shots of the games just described.

FIGURE 7-1 Games to install from the Fedora Repository include Frozen Bubble, Gweled, Warzone 2100, Quake III Arena, and Vega Strike

Despite gains in gaming support in Linux, there are still a lot of popular Windows games that don’t run in Linux. For that reason, some PC gamers maintain a separate Windows partition on their computers so they can boot to Windows to play particular games.

NOTE

Overview of Linux Gaming Linux is a wonderful platform for both running and, perhaps more especially, developing computer games. Casual gamers have no shortage of fun games to try. Hardcore gamers face a few more challenges with Linux. Here are some of the opportunities and challenges as you approach Linux gaming: ■

3D acceleration — If you are a more serious gamer, you will almost certainly want a video card that provides hardware acceleration. Open source drivers for some video cards are available from the DRI project. Video cards from NVIDIA and ATI often have binary-only drivers available. Fun open source games such as PenguinPlanet Racer, BZFlag, and others that recommend hardware acceleration, will run much better if you get one of these supported cards and drivers. Some commercial games will not run at all without 3D acceleration support.

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■

Gaming servers — Many commercial computer games that don’t have Linux clients available do have Linux game servers associated with them. So Linux is a great operating system for hosting a LAN party or setting up an Internet gaming server.

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Linux gaming development — Some of the most advanced tools and application programming interfaces (APIs) for developing computer games run on Linux systems. If you are interested in developing your own games to run in Linux, check out the OpenGL (http://opengl.org) and Simple Directmedia Layer (www.libsdl.org) projects. Blender (www.blender.org) is an open source project for doing animations, 3D models, post-production, and rendering that is being used today in commercial games and movie animations.

While the development tools available for developing open source games are awesome, a primary goal of this book is to get you up and using Linux as quickly as possible. To that end, I want to give you details on how to get hold of games that already run well in Linux and then show you how to get games working in Linux that are intended for other platforms (particularly Windows and some classic gaming consoles).

Basic Linux Gaming Information Many Web sites provide information about the latest games available for Linux, as well as links to download sites. Here’s a list of some sites to get you started: ■

TransGaming Technologies (www.transgaming.com) — This company’s mission is to bring games from other platforms to Linux. It is the provider of Cedega, formerly known as WineX, a powerful tool that enables you to play hundreds of PC games on your Linux system.

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The Linux Game Tome (http://happypenguin.org) — Features a database of descriptions and reviews of tons of games that run in Linux. You can do keyword searches for games listed at this site. There are also links to sites where you can get the games and to other gaming sites.

■

Linuxgames.com (http://linuxgames.com) — This site can give you some very good insight into the state of Linux gaming. There are links to HOWTOs and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), as well as forums for discussing Linux games. There are also links to Web sites that have information about specific games.

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id Software (www.idsoftware.com) — Go to the id Software site for information on Linux versions for Quake and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

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Linuxgamepublishing.com (www.linuxgamepublishing.com) — Linuxgamepublishing.com aims to be a one-stop shopping portal for native Linux games, as well as for ports of games from other platforms. At the time of this writing, it offers about a dozen games. To purchase games from this site, you must create a user account.

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■

Loki Entertainment Software (www.lokigames.com) — Loki provided ports of best-selling games to Linux but went out of business in 2001. Its products included Linux versions of Civilization: Call to Power, Myth II: Soulblighter, SimCity 3000, Railroad Tycoon II, and Quake III Arena. The Loki Demo Launcher is still available to see demo versions of these games, and some boxed sets are available for very little money. The Loki site also offers a list of commercial resellers for its games, which may or may not still carry those games.

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Tux Games (www.tuxgames.com) — The Tux Games Web site is dedicated to the sale of Linux games. In addition to offering Linux gaming news and products, the site lists its topselling games and includes notices of games that are soon to be released.

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Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) — In the past few years, Wikipedia has become a wonderful resource for information on both commercial and open source games available for Linux. From the Wikipedia Linux games list (http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Linux_games) you can find links to free Linux games, Commercial Linux Games, and Professionally Developed Linux Games.

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Linux Gamers’ FAQ (http://icculus.org/lgfaq) — Contains a wealth of information about free and commercial Linux games. It lists gaming companies that have ported their games to Linux, tells where to get Linux games, and answers queries related to common Linux gaming problems. For a list of Linux games without additional information, see http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php.

7

While the sites just mentioned provide excellent information on Linux gaming, not all open source games have been packaged specifically for every version of Linux. Even though you can always nudge a game into working on your particular Linux distribution, it’s probably easiest to start with games that are ready to run. The following list provides information about where to find out about games packaged for different Linux distributions: ■

Fedora — Much of the recent increase in Fedora games has come from the Fedora Games SIG (Special Interest Group). You can check out that SIG’s activities for information on other games of interest that have not made it into Fedora at http://fedoraproject .org/wiki/SIGs/Games.

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Debian — Debian games resources are listed at the Debian wiki. Visit the games section at http://wiki.debian.org/Game.

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Ubuntu — The Games Community Ubuntu Documentation page offers some good information about available games and gaming initiatives related to Ubuntu (http://help .ubuntu.com/community/Games).

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Gentoo — Visit the Gentoo Games list at the Gentoo Wiki http://gentoo-wiki.com/ Games to select games that are of interest to you that run in Gentoo.

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Slackware — While GNOME and KDE games run fine in Slackware, not a lot of gaming resources are particular to Slackware. However, because Slackware contains a solid set of libraries and development tools, many open source games will compile and run in Slackware if you are willing to get the source code for the game you want and build it yourself.

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Choosing Gaming Hardware for Linux In general, you need more RAM, a stronger processor, and a bit more disk space for gaming than you need for most Linux applications. Some of the most demanding commercial PC games will run best with at least 1GB of RAM and a 1GHz processor. However, the video card is usually the most important piece of hardware. Because 3D games place extraordinary demands on your video hardware, choosing a good video card and configuring it properly are key to ensuring a good gaming experience. For advanced gaming, you need to go beyond what an old 64-bit card can do for you.

Binary-Only Video Card Drivers Most serious Linux gamers have either an NVIDIA or ATI card, so that’s the short answer to starting out with serious Linux gaming. Although open source drivers are available for most NVIDIA and ATI cards, those drivers do not support 3D hardware acceleration. While that’s fine for most desktop applications, for gaming you want to get the binary-only drivers for those cards from the following locations: ■

NVIDIA — To get NVIDIA drivers that run in Linux, go to the Unix Drivers Portal Page (www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html).

■

ATI — To find Linux drivers for ATI video cards, visit the ATI support Knowledge Base page that describes Linux drivers at http://support.ati.com/ and click on the Knowledgebase tab.

When you go to get a binary-only video driver, be sure that you know not only the video card model you are using, but also the name and version of your X server. (XFree86 used to be the most popular server, but most Linux distributions now use X.Org.) Resulting video driver modules may be specific to the Linux kernel you are running. So, know that if you upgrade your kernel, you might need to reinstall your video driver as well. The rpm.livna.org site has greatly simplified the process of installing ATI and NVIDIA drivers for Fedora. Refer to the Livna Switcher page (http://rpm.livna.org/) to learn how to install RPM packages containing the ATI or NVIDIA drivers you need.

NOTE

If you load a binary-only driver, it does what is referred to as “tainting the kernel.” As a result, you won’t be able to get support if you run into problems (at least from kernel. org) because, lacking the source code, it is hard to debug driver-related problems. Also, binary-only drivers are known to cause obscure problems because they get out of sync with kernel code changes. Similarly, binary-only drivers for some Linux systems aren’t updated as frequently as the kernel. While many people, including myself, use binary-only drivers in special cases, they do have shortcomings that you should be aware of.

CAUTION

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Open Source Video Drivers If you want to use open source drivers for 3D accelerated gaming, whether you are running the games using Cedega or natively in Linux, look for cards that have drivers that support OpenGL. The DRI project is one initiative that is creating OpenGL driver implementations. Information about the DRI project can be found on their site (http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/). ■

ATI Technologies — You don’t have to use binary-only drivers to get 3D acceleration for some ATI video cards with open source drivers. Chip sets from ATI Technologies that support DRI include the Mach64 (Rage Pro), Radeon 7X00 (R100), Radeon 2 / 8500 (R200), and Rage 128 (Standard, Pro, Mobility). Cards based on these chip sets include All-inWonder 128, Rage Fury, Rage Magnum, Xpert 99, Xpert 128, and Xpert 2000.

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3dfx — If you can find a used unit on eBay (3dfx is no longer in business), there are several 3dfx cards that support DRI. In particular, the Voodoo (3, 4, and 5) and Banshee chip sets have drivers that support DRI. Voodoo 5 cards support 16 and 24 bpp. Scan Line Interleaving (SLI), where two or more 3D processors work in parallel (to result in higher frame rates), is not supported for 3dfx cards.

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3Dlabs — Graphics cards containing the MX/Gamma chip set from 3Dlabs have drivers available that support DRI in Linux.

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Intel — Supported video chip sets from Intel include the i810 (e, e2, and -dc100), i815, and i815e.

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Matrox — The Matrox chip sets that have drivers that support DRI include the G200, G400, G450, and G550. Cards that use these chips include the Millennium G450, Millennium G400, Millennium G200, and Mystique G200.

To find out whether DRI is working on your current video card, type the following: $ glxinfo | grep rendering direct rendering: Yes

This example shows that direct rendering is enabled. If it were not supported, the output would say No instead of Yes. While DRI can be important, many games implement OpenGL rendering, which is a feature supported by both NVIDIA and ATI video cards. To enable rendering for cards that support it, add the following line to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file: Load

“render”

Running Open Source Linux Games A handful of games are delivered with most desktop-oriented Linux distributions. The GNOME and KDE environments, which are available with most desktop Linux distributions (described in Chapter 3), each has a set of games associated with it.

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GNOME Games More than a dozen basic games are delivered with the GNOME desktop. If you are just looking for a game to pass a bit of time, one of the GNOME games will probably work fine for you. GNOME games consist of some old card games and a bunch of games that look suspiciously like those you would find on Windows systems. If you are afraid of losing your favorite desktop diversion (such as Solitaire, FreeCell, and Minesweeper) when you leave Windows, have no fear. You can find many of them under GNOME games.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

Default installations of Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux systems include the gnome-games package. Table 7-1 lists the games included in the gnome-games package. See the GNOME Games site (http://live.gnome.org/GnomeGames/) for further details.

TABLE 7-1

GNOME Games Game

Description

AisleRiot Solitaire

You can select from among 28 different solitaire card games.

Blackjack

Card game where you try to get closer to 21 (without going over) than the dealer.

Chess

Chess game that can be played in 2D or 3D against the computer.

Five or More

Clone of the color lines game (glines).

Four-In-A-Row

Drop balls to beat the game at making four in a row.

FreeCell Solitaire

A popular solitaire card game.

GnomeFallingBlocks / Gnometris

GNOME Tetris-like game.

Iagno

Disk flipping game, similar to reversi.

Klotski

Move pieces around to allow one piece to escape.

Mahjongg

Classic Asian tile game.

Mines

Minesweeper clone. Click on safe spaces and avoid the bombs.

Nibbles

Steer a worm around the screen while avoiding walls.

Robots

Later version of Gnobots, which includes movable junk heaps.

Same GNOME

Eliminate clusters of balls for a high score.

Sodoku

A Japanese logic puzzle where you fill in numbers instead of words.

Tali

Yahtzee clone. Roll dice to fill in categories.

Tetravex

A clone of Tetravex from the GNOME project. Move blocks so that numbers on each side align.

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KDE Games A bunch of games are available for the KDE desktop environment. (In Fedora, Ubuntu, and other versions of Linux that include KDE, these games come in the kdegames package.) Table 7-2 contains a list of KDE games. There may be a different set of games included with your Linux distribution.

TABLE 7-2

Games for the KDE Desktop Game

Description

Arcade Games KAsteroids

Destroy asteroids in the classic arcade game.

KBounce

Add walls to block in bouncing balls.

KFoul Eggs

Squish eggs in this Tetris-like game.

Klickety

Click color groups to erase blocks in this adaptation of Clickomania.

Kolf

Play a round of virtual golf.

KSirtet

Tetris clone. Try to fill in lines of blocks as they drop down.

KSmileTris

Tetris with smiley faces.

KSnakeRace

Race your snake around a maze.

KSpaceDuel

Fire at another spaceship as you spin around a planet.

Board Games Atlantik

Play this Monopoly-like game against other players on the network.

KBackgammon

Online version of Backgammon.

KBlackBox

Find hidden balls by shooting rays.

Kenolaba

Move game pieces to push opponents’ pieces off the board.

KMahjongg

Classic oriental tile game.

KReversi

Flip game pieces to outmaneuver the opponent.

Shisen-Sho

Tile game similar to Mahjongg.

Kwin4

Drop colored pieces to get four pieces in a row.

Card Games KPoker

Video poker clone. Play five-card draw, choosing which cards to hold and which to throw.

Lieutenant Skat

Play the card game Skat.

Patience

Choose from nine different solitaire card games. continued

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TABLE 7-2

(continued)

Game

Description

Tactics and Strategy KAtomic

Move pieces to create different chemical compounds.

KGoldrunner

Strategy puzzle game.

KJumping Cube

Click squares to increase numbers and take over adjacent squares.

KMines

Minesweeper clone. Click safe spaces and avoid the bombs.

Kolor Lines

Move marbles to form five-in-a-row and score points.

Konquest

Expand your interstellar empire in this multiplayer game.

Potato Guy

Build your own potato-head face.

SameGame

Erase game pieces to score points.

The games on the KDE menu range from amusing to quite challenging. If you are used to playing games in Windows, KMines and Patience will seem like old favorites. KAsteroids and KPoker are good for the mindless game category. For a mental challenge (it’s harder than it looks), try KSokoban.

Games in Fedora Fedora offers an extensive set of games, resulting from a very active Games special interest group (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games). Table 7-3 lists some of the games that are included in the Fedora software repository.

TABLE 7-3

Games from Fedora Game

Description

Beneath a Steel Sky (beneath-asteel-sky)

A popular commercial science fiction adventure game from the early 1990s, set in a repulsive, futuristic city.

BSD Games (bsdgames)

Text-based card games and adventure games dating back to early UNIX systems of the 1970s and run from the shell.

BZFlag (bzflag)

3D multiplayer tank battle game.

Celestia (celestia)

OpenGL real-time visual space simulation. (Available under the Other menu.)

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Game

Description

Flight Gear (FlightGear)

Flight simulator game.

FooBilliard (foobilliard)

OpenGL billiard game.

Freeciv (freeciv)

The Freeciv multiplayer strategy game.

Freedoom (freedoom)

Data files for Doom game engines. (Use with the prboom package, which provides an open source port of the Doom engine.)

Freedroid (freedroid)

Clone of the C64 game Paradroid.

Freedroid RPG (freedroidrpg)

Freedroid theme for role-playing game with Tux as hero.

GL-117 (gl-117)

Action flight simulator.

Chess (gnuchess)

The GNU chess program. Used with the xboard package to provide a graphical chess game.

Lacewing (lacewing)

Asteroid game sporting different types of ships.

Lincity (lincity-ng)

Build simulated cities.

LMarbles (lmarbles)

Atomix clone where you create figures out of marbles.

Maelstrom (Maelstrom)

A space combat game.

Nexuiz (nexuiz)

Death match–oriented first person shooter (multiplayer).

Overgod

Another Asteroid-like game.

Powermanga (powermanga)

Arcade 2D shoot-’em-up game.

PPRacer (ppracer)

3D racing game featuring Tux.

Rogue (rogue)

Graphical version of a classic adventure game.

Scorched Earth (scorched3d)

Game based loosely on the classic DOS game Scorched Earth.

Sirius (sirius)

Othello for GNOME.

Starfighter (starfighter)

Project: Starfighter, a space arcade game. (Available by typing the /usr/games/ starfighter command.)

7

continued

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TABLE 7-3

(continued)

Game

Description

SuperTux (supertux)

Jump-’n-run game similar to Mario Bros.

TORCS (torcs)

The Open Racing Car Simulator.

The Ur-Quan Masters (uqm)

The Ur-Quan Masters, a port of the classic game Star Control II.

Vega Strike (vegastrike)

Spaceflight simulator (3D OpenGL).

Virus Killer (viruskiller)

Frantic shooting game where viruses invade your computer.

Worminator (worminator)

Multilevel shoot-’em-up game.

Chess (xboard)

An X Window System graphical chessboard.

X Pilot (xpilot-ng)

Multiplayer space arcade game. (The xpilot-ng-server is also available.)

xplanet (xplanet)

Render a planetary image into an X window. (Available by typing the xplanet command.)

The following sections describe two of the more interesting games that you can download directly from the Fedora repository: Freeciv and Extreme Tux Racer.

Freeciv Freeciv is a free clone of the popular Civilization game series from Atari. With Freeciv, you create a civilization that challenges competing civilizations for world dominance.

NOTE

A commercial port of Civilization for Linux (Civilization: Call to Power) was created a few years ago by Loki Games (described later in this chapter).

The commonly distributed version of Freeciv contains both client software (to play the game) and server software (to connect players together). You can connect to your server and try the game yourself or (with a network connection) play against up to 14 other players on the Internet. To install Freeciv if your Linux distribution doesn’t offer it, check out the download page on the www.freeciv.org Web site. Choose your language, start downloading, install, and have fun. You can start Freeciv from a Terminal window by typing: $ civclient &

NOTE

If Freeciv won’t start, you may be logged in as root. You must be logged in as a regular user to run the civ command.

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You can play a few games by yourself, if you like, to get to know the game before you play against others on the network. Follow these steps to start your first practice Freeciv game: 1. Select Start New Game. (In addition to starting the client, this action also starts civserver, which will allow others to connect to your game, if you like.) You are asked to choose the number of players, skill level, and other game options. 2. Select 2 to play against the computer or a higher number if you want others to join in; then click Start. A What Nation Will You Be? window appears on the client, as shown in Figure 7-2. 3. Choose a nation, name a leader, select your gender, choose the style of the city, and then click OK. At this point, you should be ready to begin playing Freeciv. FIGURE 7-2 Choose a nation to begin Freeciv.

Beginning with Freeciv Check out the Freeciv window before you start playing the game: ■

Click the Help button for topical information on many different subjects that will be useful to you as you play. (You can find more help at the Freeciv site.)

■

The world (by default) is 80 × 50 squares, with 11 × 8 squares visible at a time.

■

The active square contains an icon of the active unit (flashing alternatively with the square’s terrain).

■

Some squares contain special resources. Press and hold the middle mouse button for information on what special resources a square contains. (With a two-button mouse, hold down the Ctrl key and click the right mouse button.) Try this a few times to get a feel for the land around you. This action also identifies any units on the terrain, as well as statistics for the unit.

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To see the world outside your 11 × 8 viewing area, click the scroll bars outside the map. At first, the part of the world you haven’t explored yet will be black. As units are added, areas closer to those units will be visible. (Press C to return to the active part of your map.)

■

An overview map is in the upper-left corner of the Freeciv window. As the world becomes more civilized, this provides a good way to get an overview of what is going on. Right-click a spot on the overview map to have your viewport centered there.

■

The menu bar contains buttons you can use to play the game. The Game menu enables you to change settings and options, view player data, view messages, and clear your log. The Kingdom menu enables you to change tax rates, find cities, and start revolutions. The View menu enables you to place a grid on the map or center the view. The Orders menu enables you to choose the items you build and the actions you take. The Reports menu enables you to display reports related to cities, military, trade, and science, as well as other special reports.

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A summary of the economy of your civilization appears under the overview map. Information includes number of people, current year, and money in the treasury.

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Ten icons below the overview information represent how money is divided among luxuries (an entertainer), science (a researcher), and taxes (a tax collector). Essentially, these icons represent how much of your resources are placed into improving each of those attributes of your community.

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When you have made all your moves for a turn, click Turn Done. Next to that, a light bulb indicates the progress of your research (increasing at each turn). A sun icon starts clear, but becomes brighter from pollution to warn of possible global warming. A government symbol indicates that you begin with a despotic government. The last icon tells you how much time is left in a turn.

■

The Unit box shows information about your current unit. You begin with two Settlers units (covered-wagon icons) and one Explorer (a man icon) unit. Click on a Settler, Explorer, city, or other unit to use it or learn about it.

Building Your Civilization Start building your civilization. The Freeciv manual makes these suggestions: ■

To change the distribution of money, choose Government ➪ Tax Rates. Move the slider bars to redistribute the percentage of assets assigned to luxury, science, and taxes. Try increasing science and reducing taxes to start off.

■

Change the current unit to be a settler as follows: Click the stack of units on the map and click one of the Settlers from the menu that appears.

■

Begin building a city by clicking Orders ➪ Build City. When prompted, type a name for the city and click OK. The window that appears shows information about the city. It starts with one happy citizen, represented by a single icon (more citizens will appear as the game progresses).

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The Food, Prod, and Trade lines reflect the raw productivity statistics for the city. The first number shows how much is being produced; the second (in parentheses) shows the surplus above what is needed to support the units. The Gold, Luxury, and Science lines indicate the city’s trade output. Granary numbers show how much food is stored and the size of the food store. The pollution level begins at zero.

■

Close the city window by clicking Close.

7

Exploring Your World To begin exploring, move the Settlers and the Explorer: 1. Using the numeric keypad, press the 9 key three times to begin exploring. You can move the Explorer up to three times per turn. You begin to see more of the world. 2. When the next unit (a Settler) begins blinking, move it one square in another direction. When you have made all the moves you want to make (or all that the game allows), the Turn Done button is highlighted. Click Turn Done to start your next turn. Information for the city is updated. (The city changes and grows, simply through the passage of time reflected in the turns.) 3. Click the City to see the city window. Notice that information about the city has been updated. In particular, you should see food storage increase. Close the city window. 4. Continue exploring and build a road. With the Explorer flashing, use the numeric keypad to move it another three sections. When the Settler begins blinking, press R to build a road. A small R appears on the square to remind you that the Settler is busy building a road. Click Turn Done.

Using More Controls and Actions Now that you have some understanding of the controls and actions, the game can go in a lot of different directions. Here are a few things that might happen next and things you can do: ■

After you take a turn, the computer gets a chance to play. As it plays, its actions are reported to you. You can make decisions on what to do about those actions. Choose Game ➪ Message Options. The Message Options window appears, containing a listing of different kinds of messages that can come from the server and how they will be presented to you.

■

As you explore, you will run into other explorers and eventually other civilizations. Continue exploring by selecting different directions on your numeric keypad.

■

Continue to move the Settler one square at a time after it has finished creating the road. The Settler will blink again when it is available. Click Turn Done to continue.

■

At this point, you should see a message that your city has finished building Warriors. When buildings and units are complete, you should usually check out what has happened. Click the message associated with the city, and then click Popup City. The city window appears, showing you that it has additional population. The food storage may appear empty, but the new citizens are working to increase the food and trade. You may see an additional warrior unit.

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A science advisory may also appear to let you choose your city’s research goals. Click Change and select Writing as your new research goal. You can then select a different long-term goal as well. Click Close when you are done.

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If your new Warrior is now blinking, press the S key to assign sentry mode to the Warrior.

■

Select Reports from time to time to keep track of statistics about your Cities, Units, Economy, Science, and other attributes of your world.

Those moves provided familiarity with some of the actions of Freeciv. To learn some basic strategies for playing the game, choose Help ➪ Help Playing.

Extreme Tux Racer With Extreme Tux Racer, you guide Tux the penguin (the Linux mascot) down a snow-covered hill as fast as you can. Extreme Tux Racer is an open source (GPL) version of TuxRacer, which was once freeware, but was later made into a commercial game by Sunspire Studios. To advance in Extreme Tux Racer, you need to complete courses in the allotted time while overcoming whatever obstacle is presented (gathering herring or negotiating flags). You move up to try different courses and achieve higher-level cups. Figure 7-3 shows a screenshot of PlanetPenguin Racer.

FIGURE 7-3 Race Tux the penguin down a mountain.

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Commercial Linux Games When Loki Software, Inc. closed its doors a few years ago, the landscape of commercial gaming in Linux changed. Loki produced Linux ports of popular games, including Myth II and Civilization: Call to Power, to name a couple, and many hoped it would help Linux become the premier gaming platform. Since then, no single company has stepped up to port that wide a range of best-selling games to Linux. However, smaller Linux game publishers and companies porting popular Windows games to Linux have begun to pop up. Also, commercial games that run natively are led by several popular games from id Software (described in the next section) and a few gaming companies that have ported individual titles to Linux. Some Loki games are still available for purchase on the Web. They sell for a fraction of their original price, but you are on your own if they don’t work because Loki Software is no longer there to support them. The Loki Games Demo is still around, if you want to get a feel for a particular Loki game before it disappears completely. (I describe how to find demo and packaged Loki Games later in this chapter.) Although the state of Linux gaming has improved a great deal in the last few years, Linux is still emerging as a gaming platform. Linux has some of the technology needed to support advanced games, but the technology and developer support have not yet really come together. Most serious gamers still maintain a Windows partition to support their gaming habits. According to top game developers, there are significant hurdles — both technological and economic — that hinder development of games for Linux. In particular, the relatively small size of the Linux gaming market means that incentives to overcome some technical issues are not particularly strong. However, these limitations are not overwhelming and small Linux gaming developers are beginning to make inroads. As you’ll see later in this chapter, even the hardcore game nut can successfully use Linux.

Getting Started with Commercial Games in Linux How you get started with Linux gaming depends on how serious you are about it. If all you want to do is play a few games to pass the time, I’ve already described plenty of diverting X Window games that come with Linux. If you want to play more powerful commercial games, you can choose from the following: ■

Games for Microsoft Windows (Cedega 6.0) — Many of the most popular commercial games created to run on Microsoft operating systems will run in Linux using Cedega. To get RPM versions of Cedega, you must sign up for a Cedega subscription at www.transgaming .com. Make sure to check in with www.linuxgames.com to see if there is a relevant HOWTO for working with the particular game you have in mind. Many games are covered there, including Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. To see if your favorite Windows game will run in Linux and Cedega, refer to the TransGaming.Org Games Database at www.cedega .com/gamesdb.

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Games for Linux (id Software and others) — Certain popular games have Linux versions available. Most notably, id Software offers its Doom and Return to Castle Wolfenstein in Linux versions. Other popular games that run natively in Linux include Unreal Tournament 2004 and 2005 from Atari (www.unrealtournament.com). Commercial games that run in Linux without WINE, Cedega, or some sort of Windows emulation typically come in a boxed version for Windows with some sort of Linux installer included.

■

Independent Linux Game Developers — Several small companies are currently producing games for Linux. Notable Linux game developers include Introversion Software (introversion.co.uk) and Frictional Games (www.frictionalgames.com). Introversion’s games include Uplink, Darwinia, and Defcon. By the time you read this, Multiwinia should also be available. Frictional games include Penumbra: Overture and Penumbra: Black Plague, both of which portray 3D horror stories.

Linux games that were ported directly to Linux from the now defunct company Loki Software, Inc. are still available. While you cannot purchase the titles directly from Loki, you can go online to one of Loki’s resellers at www.lokigames.com/orders/resellers.php3. For example, Amazon.com (one of the listed resellers) shows 16 titles, including Quake III, Myth II: Soulblighter, and Heretic II for Linux.

Playing Commercial Linux Games To get your commercial games running in Linux, you should start from a site such as The Linux Game Tome (www.happypenguin.org) or Linux Gamers’ FAQ (http://icculus.org/lgfaq), which provide information on commercial games that run in Linux and help in getting them to run. In most cases, you need to do the following: ■

Purchase a legal copy of the game.

■

Go to a Web site that describes how to install, get patches for, and work around any issues related to playing the game in Linux.

Here are examples of a few commercial games that run well in Linux: ■

Duke 3D Atomic Edition for Linux (3D Realms) — Duke Nukem returns to earth to face aliens and clean up Los Angeles in this third chapter in the Duke Nukem series. Visit 3D Realms for official information about Duke 3D Atomic Edition (www.3drealms.com/duke3d). See the Icculus.org site (http://icculus.org/duke3d/) for tips on getting it running.

■

Unreal Tournament 2003 (Epic Games) — Multiplayer death match set in the future, where warriors face each other with awesome weapons and stuff. It includes a Linux installer. Go to Epic Games (www.epicgames.com) or the Unreal Tournament site (www.unrealtournament.com) for the official information. Visit the Icculus.org site for tips on installing in Linux (www.icculus.org/lgfaq#ut2k3_install).

■

Unreal Tournament 2004 (Epic Games) — Adds new maps, characters, vehicles, weapons, and modes of play to the 2003 edition.

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The following sections describe Linux games from id Software, information about running Windows games using Cedega in Linux, and games from the now-defunct Loki Games still available from other sources today.

id Software Games Among the most popular games running natively in Linux are Quake II, Quake III Arena, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein from id Software, Inc. You can purchase Linux versions of these games or download demos of each game before you buy. As noted earlier, Quake III Arena demos are available in Fedora and other Linux software repositories.

NOTE

If you have trouble getting any id Software games running in Linux, refer to the Linux FAQs available from id Software at: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux.

Quake III Arena Quake III Arena is a first-person, shooter-type game where you can choose from lots of weapons (lightning guns, shotguns, grenade launchers, and so on) and pass through scenes with highly detailed 3D surfaces. You can play alone or against your friends. There are multiplayer death-match and capture-the-flag competitions. Standalone play allows you to advance through a tournament structure of skilled AI opponents. This version of the game has a selectable difficulty level, from fairly easy to beat to downright impossible. If your Linux distribution doesn’t already include it, a demo version of Quake III Arena for Linux is available from the id Software Web site (click the demo link at www.idsoftware.com/games/ quake/quake3-gold/ and then look for the Linux demo). Because the demo is in the form of a large shell script, to save it you can right-click the link and select Save Link As from your Web browser. Figure 7-4 shows a screenshot from Quake III Arena.

FIGURE 7-4 Quake III Arena is a popular first-person shooter game that runs in Linux.

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Return to Castle Wolfenstein You battle with the Allies to destroy the Third Reich in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which mixes World War II action with creatures conjured up by Nazi scientists. It is based on the Quake III Arena engine and offers single-player mode as well as team-based multiplayer mode. If you purchase Return to Castle Wolfenstein for Linux, you actually get the Windows version with an extra Linux installer. If you already have the Windows version, you can download the Linux installer and follow some instructions to get it going. I downloaded the installer called wolf-linux1.31.x86.run from www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein/rtcw/index.php?game_ section=updates. The INSTALL file (in /usr/local/games/wolfenstein) describes which files you need to copy from the Windows CD. To get a demo of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, go to www.idsoftware.com/games/wolfenstein/ rtcw/index.php?game_section=overview. Both single-player and multiplayer demos are available.

CAUTION

You need an NVIDIA card to run Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Figure 7-5 is a screenshot from Return to Castle Wolfenstein running in Linux.

FIGURE 7-5 Return to Castle Wolfenstein combines strange creatures and World War II battles.

Playing TransGaming and Cedega Games TransGaming Technologies brings to Linux some of the most popular games that currently run on the Windows platforms. Working with WINE developers, TransGaming is developing Cedega, which enables you to run many different games on Linux that were originally developed for Windows. Although TransGaming is producing a few games that are packaged separately and tuned for Linux, in most cases it sells you a subscription service to Cedega instead of the games. That subscription service lets you stay up-to-date on the continuing development of Cedega so you can run more and more Windows games.

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To get Windows games to run in Linux, Cedega particularly focuses its development on Microsoft DirectX features that are required by many of today’s games. There are also issues related to CD keys and hooks into the Windows operating system that must be overcome (such as requiring Microsoft Active Desktop). A Cedega subscription has value, in part, because it lets you vote on which games you’d like to see TransGaming work on next.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

A full list of games supported by TransGaming, as well as indications of how popular they are and how well they work, is available from the TransGaming site (www.cedega.com/gamesdb/). Browse games by category or alphabetically. An asterisk marks games that are officially supported by TransGaming. On each game description page is a link to a related Wiki Node, when one exists, that gives you details about how well the game works under Cedega and tips for getting it to work better. Depending on your distribution, you may need to get the vanilla kernel from kernel. org and boot that on your system before running games with Cedega. TransGaming has added several new features to the Cedega GUI (formerly called Point2Play). The Cedega GUI provides a graphical window for installing, configuring, and testing Cedega on your computer. This application also lets you install and organize your games so you can launch them graphically. Figure 7-6 shows an example of the TransGaming Cedega window.

NOTE

FIGURE 7-6 Use the Cedega window to launch Windows games in Linux.

Features in the new Cedega GUI window include a new look-and-feel and tools for individually configuring how each game runs under Cedega. (If a game won’t run from the GUI, try launching it from a Terminal window.) Here are some games that are known to run well in Cedega: ■

Day of Defeat: Source

■

World of Warcraft

■

Planescape

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Silkroad Online

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Half-Life 2

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Call of Duty 2

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To get binary copies (ones that are already compiled to run) of Cedega, you need to subscribe to TransGaming. For details on how to become a “TransGamer,” click the Sign Up Today link on the TransGaming home page (www.transgaming.com). Benefits currently include: ■

Downloads of the latest version of Cedega

■

Access to Cedega support forums

■

Ability to vote on which games you want TransGaming to support next

■

Subscription to the Cedega newsletter

Cedega used to be known as WineX. The source code for WineX may become available in the near future if you want to build your own WineX/Cedega package. To check availability, try the SourceForge.net project site for WineX (sourceforge.net/projects/winex).

Loki Software Game Demos To encourage people to get to know its games, Loki Software, Inc. offered a demo program that let you choose from among more than a dozen of its games to download and try. You can still find some of its games for sale. For example, a recent search for Loki at Amazon.com turned up 16 different Loki games (including the ones described here), many selling for $9.99. If you try to download any of the demos described in the following sections, make sure you have enough disk space available. It is common for one of these demos to require several hundred megabytes of disk space.

CAUTION

The Loki Demo Launcher page (www.lokigames.com/products/demos.php3) still offers links to FTP sites from which you can download the Demo Launcher. The file that you want to save is loki_ demos-full-1.0e-x86.run. Save it to a directory (such as /tmp/loki) and do the following: 1. Change to the directory to which you downloaded the demo. For example: # cd /tmp/loki

NOTE

You may not need to be root user to install these games. However, the paths where the Demo Launcher tries to write by default are accessible only to the root user.

2. As root user, run the following command (the program may have a different name if it has been updated): # sh loki_demos-full-1.0e.x86.run

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3. If you have not used the Demo Launcher before, a screen appears asking you to identify the paths used to place the Install Tool. If the default locations shown are okay with you, click Begin Install. 4. Assuming that there was no problem writing to the install directories, you should see an Install Complete message. Click Exit. 5. The Uninstall Tool window displays. If the paths for holding the Uninstall Tool are okay, click Begin Install. The Install Complete message appears. Click Exit. 6. The next window enables you to set the locations for installing the Demo Pack. If the paths are okay, click Begin Install. 7. A box shows the different demo games available. As you move the cursor over each game, the disk space needed for the game is displayed. Click the games you want to install and then click Continue. 8. A window displays the progress of each download. You may need to click an Update button to complete the update and then click Finish to finish it. 9. The demo should now be ready to start. Either click Play or type loki_demos from a Terminal window to start the program. 10. Select to start the game, and you’re ready to go.

The following sections describe a few games that may still be available. Again, these games may not be available for long.

Civilization: Call to Power You can build online civilizations with Civilization: Call to Power (CCP). Like earlier versions and public spinoffs (such as the Freeciv described earlier in this chapter), Civilization: Call to Power for Linux lets you explore the world, build cities, and manage your empire. The last version offered by Loki Games includes multiplayer network competition and extensions that let you extend cities into outer space and under the sea. If you like Freeciv, you will love CCP. Engaging game play is improved with enhanced graphics, sound, and animation. English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions are available. Freeciv is dependent on the Open Sound System for audio support. The Open Sound home page (www.opensound.com/osshw.html) has a list of supported sound cards, mostly older devices. If you do not have a card that’s on the list, you may be unable to enjoy the audio.

NOTE

The CCP demo comes with an excellent tutorial to start you out. If you have never played a civilization game before, the tutorial is a great way to start. Figure 7-7 shows an example scene from the Civilization: Call to Power for Linux demo.

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FIGURE 7-7 Civilization: Call to Power features excellent graphics and network play.

Myth II: Soulblighter If you like knights and dwarves and storming castles, Myth II: Soulblighter for Linux might be for you. In Myth II, you are given a mission and some troops with various skills. From there, you need strategy and the desire to shed lots of virtual blood to meet your goal. Myth II was created by Bungie Software (the gaming company known more recently for the Halo series) and ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment Software (www.lokigames.com). The Loki port of the popular Myth game includes improved graphics and new scenarios. A demo version is available that runs well in most distributions (particularly Fedora/Red Hat). You can get it via the Demo Launcher described earlier. You need at least a modest Pentium 133 MHz, 32MB RAM, 80MB swap space, and 100MB of free disk space. You also need network hardware for multiuser network play (network card or dial-up), and a sound card if you want audio. Figure 7-8 shows a screen in Myth II.

Heretic II Based on the Quake engine, Heretic II sets you on a path to rid the world of a deadly, magical plague. As the main character, Corvus, you explore dungeons, swamps, and cities to uncover and stop the plague. The graphics are rich, and the game play is quite engaging. You will experience some crashing problems with Heretic II out of the box. Be sure to check for the update to Heretic II at www.updates.lokigames.com, which should fix most of the problems.

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FIGURE 7-8 Use warriors, archers, and dwarves to battle in Myth II.

Neverwinter Nights BioWare (www.bioware.com) dipped its foot into Linux gaming waters with a Linux client for its wildly popular Neverwinter Nights game. Neverwinter Nights is a classic role-playing game in the swords-and-sorcery mold. You can develop your character and go adventuring, or play online with others via a LAN or over the Internet. You can even build your own worlds and host adventures as the Dungeon Master. Neverwinter Nights is licensed by Wizards of the Coast to use Dungeons & Dragons rules and material. Of course, to use the Neverwinter Nights Linux client, you must purchase the game from BioWare. You must also have access to certain files from a Windows installation of the game. Keep in mind that getting Neverwinter Nights running is not a simple process. Important installation instructions and downloadable files are located at http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient. html. This site includes additional information about expansion packs and updates. If you want the Neverwinter Nights experience on your Linux system to be pleasant, I highly recommend reading the instructions thoroughly. And you will need patience in addition to a high-bandwidth Internet connection. Depending on the version of Neverwinter Nights to which you have access, you may need to download up to 1.2GB of files.

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Summary With Linux ports of games such as Unreal Tournament 2004, Linux continues to grow as a gaming platform. You can spend plenty of late nights gaming on Linux. Old UNIX games that have made their way to Linux include a variety of basic X Window–based games. There are card games, strategy games, and some action games for those less inclined to spend 36 hours playing Doom 3. On the commercial front, Civilization: Call to Power for Linux and Myth II are available to use on your Linux system. Unfortunately, these will probably disappear because Loki Software (which ported those applications to Linux) went out of business. Fortunately, the future of high-end Linux gaming seems to be in the hands of TransGaming Technologies, which has created Cedega from previous WINE technology to allow Windows games to run in Linux. Commercial games that run natively in Linux are also available. These include games from id Software, such as Quake III Arena and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Smaller Linux game developers have also appeared, including Introversion Software and Frictional Games.

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Learning System Administration Skills IN THIS PART Chapter 8 Installing Linux Chapter 9 Running Commands from the Shell Chapter 10 Learning Basic Administration Chapter 11 Getting on the Internet Chapter 12 Securing Linux

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f someone hasn’t already installed and configured a Linux system for you, this chapter is going to help you get started so you can try out the Linux features described in the rest of the book. With recent improvements to Linux live CDs and installers, getting your hands on a working Linux system is quicker and more solid than ever before.

Choosing a Linux distribution

If you are a first-time Linux user, I recommend that you:

Understanding installation issues

■

Try a bootable Linux — This book’s CD and DVD include several bootable Linux systems. The advantage of a bootable Linux is that you can try out Linux without touching the contents of your computer’s hard drive. In particular, KNOPPIX is a full-featured Linux system that can give you a good feel for how Linux works. Using the DVD or CD, you can try out several different live CDs, as described in Appendix A. Some of these live CDs also include features for installing Linux to your hard disk. Although live CDs tend to run slower than installed systems and don’t keep your changes once you reboot, they are good tools for starting out with Linux.

■

Install a desktop Linux system — Choose one of the Linux distributions and install it on your computer’s hard disk. Permanently installing Linux to your hard disk gives you more flexibility for adding and removing software, accessing and saving data to hard disk, and more permanently customizing your system. Installing Linux as a desktop system lets you try out some useful applications and get the feel for Linux before dealing with more complex server issues.

IN THIS CHAPTER Getting a Linux distribution

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This chapter provides you with an overview of how to choose a Linux distribution, and then describes issues and topics that are common to installing most Linux distributions. Appendix A describes which Linux distributions are included on this book’s DVD and CD and how to run them live or use them to install Linux permanently. Each of the other chapters in this part of the book is dedicated to understanding and installing a particular Linux distribution. After you’ve installed Linux, you’ll want to understand how to get and manage software for your Linux system. These are important topics that are covered throughout the book, but this chapter describes the major packaging formats and tools to get you going.

Choosing a Linux Distribution Dozens of popular Linux distributions are available today. Some are generalized distributions that you can use as a desktop, server, or workstation system; others are specialized for business or computer enthusiasts. One intention of this book is to help you choose which one (or ones) will suit you best. Using the DVD that comes with this book, you can boot directly to KNOPPIX (or several other live CDs to try out Linux) or run an installer (to install Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, Mandriva, Freespire, or openSUSE on your computer’s hard disk). After you’ve tried out KNOPPIX and are ready to install Linux on your hard disk, I recommend you try Fedora or Ubuntu. Using the CD that comes with this book, you can boot directly to Damn Small Linux (or several other smaller bootable Linux distros), Debian, or Gentoo (to do a network install of those distributions to your hard disk). Debian and Damn Small Linux are two distributions that can be set up to work well on computers that are older and less powerful, or have a CD drive but no DVD drive. For Debian and Ubuntu, this book also provides descriptions for setting up Debian as a mail and Web server (see Chapters 13 and 14).

Linux at Work Because I know a lot of people who use Linux, both informally and at work, I want to share my general impressions of how different Linux distributions are being used in the United States. Most consultants I know who set up small office servers used to use Red Hat Linux, but now have mostly moved to Fedora, CentOS (built from Red Hat Enterprise Linux software), Ubuntu, or Debian GNU/ Linux. Mandriva Linux (formerly Mandrakelinux) has been popular with people wanting a friendly Linux desktop, but Ubuntu and Fedora are also well-liked. The more technically inclined like to play with Gentoo (highly tunable) or Slackware (Linux in a more basic form). The agreement between Novell and Microsoft prompted some open source proponents to abandon SUSE. Whether this will result in a migration from SUSE in the enterprise space, however, has yet to play out. However, right now, Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers the best choice in the enterprise realm for those who object to the alliance.

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For people transitioning to Linux with older Macintosh hardware, Yellow Dog Linux lets you install on a PowerPC and learn skills that are useful to expand later to Red Hat systems (Yellow Dog was originally based on Red Hat Linux). As for the bootable Linuxes, everyone I know thinks they are great fun to try out and a good way to learn about Linux. For a bootable Linux containing desktop software that fits on a full CD (or DVD), KNOPPIX is a good choice, as is Ubuntu; for a bootable mini-CD size Linux, Damn Small Linux works well. However, you can also try out these live CDs from the media that comes with this book: INSERT, Puppy Linux, SLAX Popcorn, System Rescue CD, or BackTrack. This book exposes you to several different Linux distributions. It gives you the advantage of being able to see the strengths and weaknesses of each distribution by actually putting your hands on it. You can also try to connect in to the growing Linux user communities because strong community support results in a more solid software distribution and help when you need it (from such things as forums and online chats).

Other Distributions There seems to be a new Linux distribution every five minutes, and I really have to stop writing this book at some point. To keep the descriptions of Linux distributions to a reasonable size (and actually have the space to describe how to use Linux), several interesting Linux distributions aren’t explored in this book. Notable Linux distributions not included in this book are TurboLinux, Xandros, and CentOS. TurboLinux (www.turbolinux.com) is a popular distribution in Asia-Pacific countries. Xandros (www.xandros.com), designed to operate well in Microsoft Windows environments, is a well-regarded desktop Linux system. CentOS has become very popular among consultants who used to use Red Hat Linux. CentOS is a rebuild of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux source code. So, people use it for servers that require longer update cycles that you would get with Fedora. However, because CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are built from technology developed for Fedora, you can learn a lot about how to use those two distributions by using Fedora. The following sections explain how to look beyond the confines of this book for those and other Linux distributions.

Getting Your Own Linux Distribution By packaging a handful of Linux distributions with this book, I hoped to save you the trouble of getting Linux yourself. If you have a DVD drive, perhaps you can use this opportunity to at least try KNOPPIX, so you’ll better understand what’s being discussed. If you have a CD drive only, at least boot directly to Damn Small Linux from the CD that comes with this book. If for some reason you can’t use the software on the CD or DVD, you may want to get your own Linux distributions to use with the descriptions in this book. Reasons you might want to get your own Linux distributions include: ■

No DVD drive — You need a bootable DVD drive on your computer to use the Linux distributions on the DVD that comes with this book.

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Later distributions — You may want a more recent version of a particular distribution than comes with this book.

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Complete distributions — Because there’s limited space on the CD and DVD and because some distributions require subscriptions or other fees, you may want to obtain your own, more complete distribution with which to work.

Today, there is no shortage of ways to get Linux.

Finding Another Linux Distribution You can go to the Web site of each distribution (such as http://fedoraproject.org or http:// slackware.com/getslack) to get Linux software. Those sites often let you download a complete copy of their distributions and give you the opportunity to purchase a boxed set. However, one way to get a more complete view of available Linux distributions is to go to a Web site dedicated to spreading information about Linux distributions. Use these sites to connect to forums and download documentation about many Linux distributions. Here are some examples: ■

DistroWatch (www.distrowatch.com) — The first place I go to find Linux distributions is DistroWatch.com. Go to the Major Distributions link to read about the top Linux distributions (most of which are included with this book). Links will take you to download sites, forums, home pages, and other sites related to each distribution.

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Linux Help (www.linuxhelp.net) — Select the ISO images link from this site’s home page, and you can find download links to ISO images for many of the most popular Linux distributions.

If you don’t want to download and burn the CDs yourself, there are plenty of links on those sites from places willing to sell you Linux CDs or DVDs. Distribution prices are often only a little bit higher than the cost of the media and shipping. If you really like a particular Linux distribution, it’s a good idea to purchase it directly from the organization that makes it. That can ensure the health of the distribution into the future. Books that come with software included can also be a good way to get a Linux distribution. Finding up-to-date documentation can be difficult when you have nothing but a CD to start out with. Standard Linux documentation (such as HOWTOs and man pages) is often out of date with the software. So, I would particularly recommend a book and distribution (such as this one or Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Bible from Wiley Publishing) for first-time Linux users.

Understanding What You Need The most common media used to install Linux are CDs and DVDs that contain everything you need to complete the install. Another way to start a Linux installation is with a floppy or CD that includes an installation boot image and then get the parts of Linux you need live from the network as you install Linux.

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The images that are burned onto the CDs are typically stored on the Internet in what are called software repositories. You can download the images and burn them to CDs yourself. Alternatively, the software packages are usually also included separately in directories. Those separate software directories enable you to start an install process with a minimal boot disc that can grab packages over the network during the installation process. (Some of the installations I recommend with this book are done that way.) When you follow links to Linux software repositories, here’s what you look for: ■

Download directory — You often have to step down a few directories from the download link that gets you to a repository. Look for subdirectories that describe the distribution, architecture, release, and medium format. For example, mirrors for the Fedora 10 Linux distribution might be named fedora/linux/10/i386/iso. Other Linux distributions, such as Gentoo and Debian, have tools that will search out online repositories for you, so you don’t have to find a mirror directory on your own. (As an alternative, you can grab the Linux live CD or install images via BitTorrent, as described later.)

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ISO images — The software images you are going to burn to CD are typically stored in ISO format. Some repositories include a README file to tell you what images you need (others just assume you know). To install a distribution, you want the set of ISOs containing the Linux distribution’s binary files.

Although an ISO image appears as one file, it’s actually like a snapshot of a file system. You can mount that image to see all the files the image contains by using the loop feature of the mount command. For example, with an image called abc.iso in the current directory, create an empty directory (mkdir myiso) and, as root, run the mount command: mount -o loop abc.iso myiso. Change to the myiso directory and you can view the files and directories the ISO image contains. When you are done viewing the contents, leave the directory and unmount the ISO image (cd .. ; umount myiso).

NOTE

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MD5SUM — To verify that you got the right CDs completely intact, after you download them look for a file named MD5SUM or ending in .md5 in the ISO directory. The file contains one or more MD5 (128-bit) checksums, representing the ISO files you want to check. Other distributions publish SHA1 checksums, which does 160-bit checksums. You can use that file to verify the content of each CD (as described later).

Downloading the Distribution You can download each ISO image by simply clicking the link and downloading it to a directory in your computer when prompted. You can do this on a Windows or Linux system. If you know the location of the image you want, with a running Linux system, the wget command is a better way to download than just clicking a link in your browser. The advantage of using wget is that you can restart a download that stops in the middle for some reason. A wget command to download a KNOPPIX CD image (starting from the directory you want to download to) might look like this: $ wget -c kernel.org/pub/dist/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

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If the download stops before it is completed, run the command again. The -c option tells wget to begin where the download left off, so that if you are 690MB into a 696MB download when it stopped, it just adds in the last 6MB. A more “good citizen” approach to downloading your ISO images is to use a facility called BitTorrent (http://bittorrent.com). BitTorrent enables you to download a file to your computer by grabbing bits of that file from multiple computers on the network that are downloading the file at the same time. For the privilege, you also use your upload capacity to share the same file with others as you are downloading. During times of heavy demand with a new Linux distribution, BitTorrent can be the best way to go. Recent news articles have portrayed BitTorrent as a tool for illegal activities, such as downloading copyrighted materials (movies, music, and so on). Because most Linux distributions contain only software covered under various open source licenses, there is no legal problem with using BitTorrent to distribute Linux distributions. Check out http://linuxtracker.org for a list of Linux distributions that can be downloaded with BitTorrent. If you are on a dial-up modem, you should strongly consider purchasing Linux CDs (or getting them from a friend) if you don’t find what you want on the CD or DVD with this book. You might be able to download an entire 700MB CD in a couple of hours on a fast DSL or cable modem connection. On a dial-up line, you might need an entire day or more per CD. For a large, multi-CD distribution, available disk space can also become a problem (although, with today’s large hard disks, it’s not as much of a problem as it used to be).

Burning the Distribution to CD With the CD images copied to your computer, you can proceed to verify their contents and burn them to CD. All you really need is a CD burner on your computer. With Linux running, you can use the md5sum or sha1sum command to verify each CD.

NOTE

If you are using Windows to validate the contents of the Linux CD, you can get the MD5Summer utility (www.md5summer.org) to verify each CD image.

Assuming you downloaded the MD5 file associated with each CD image, and have it in the same directory as your CD images, run the md5sum command to verify the image. For example, to verify the KNOPPIX CD shown previously in the wget example, you can type the following: $ md5sum KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso 653acc801d4059598bd388de8171a20d KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

The MD5SUM file I downloaded previously from the download directory was called KNOPPIX_ V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso.md5. It contained this content: 653acc801d4059598bd388de8171a20d

*KNOPPIX_V5.1.1CD-2007-01-04-EN.iso

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As you can see, the checksum (first string of characters shown) that is output from the ISO image matches the checksum in the MD5 file, so you know that the image you downloaded is the image from the server. If the project uses sha1sum to verify its ISO images, you can test your downloaded images with the sha1sum command, as follows: $ sha1sum FC-6-i386-DVD.iso 6722f95b97e5118fa26bafa5b9f622cc7d49530c FC-6-i386-DVD.iso

Once you have verified the sha1sum or md5sum of the CD or DVD, as long as you got the image from a reliable site, you should be ready to burn the CD or DVD. With your Linux distribution in hand (either on the book’s DVD or CD, or the set of CDs you got elsewhere), use commands such as cdrecord or k3b to burn your CD or DVD images to disk. Instructions for installing the distributions from the CD or DVD can be found in individual chapters devoted to each distribution (Chapters 17–28). Before you proceed, however, some information is useful for nearly every Linux system you are installing.

Exploring Common Installation Topics Before you begin installing your Linux distribution of choice, there is some general Linux information you should understand. Reading over this information might help you avoid problems or keep you from getting stuck when you install Linux.

Knowing Your Computer Hardware Every Linux will not run on every computer. When installing Linux, most people use a Pentiumclass PC. There are Linux systems that are compiled to run on other hardware, such as Mac PowerPCs or AMD 64-bit computers. However, the distributions provided with this book run only on 32-bit Pentium-class PCs. Note that because new Mac computers are built from standard Intel components, it is possible to install Linux on those computers as well (see the “Installing Linux on Intel Macs” sidebar).

Installing Linux on Intel Macs

B

ecause of the popularity of MacBook and Mac mini computers, which are based on Intel architecture, several Linux projects have produced procedures for installing their systems to dual-boot with Mac OS X. Most of these procedures involve using the Apple BootCamp software (www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp). To install the Fedora Linux that comes with this book, refer to the Fedora on Mactel page (http:// fedoraproject.org/wiki/FedoraOnMactel). For Ubuntu, refer to the Ubuntu MacBook page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook).

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Minimum hardware requirements from the Fedora Project are pretty good guidelines for most Linux systems: ■

Processor — The latest version of Fedora recommends that you have at least a Pentiumclass processor. For a text-only installation, a 200 MHz Pentium is the minimum, whereas a 400 MHz Pentium II is the minimum for a GUI installation.

If you have a 486 machine (at least 100 MHz), consider trying Damn Small Linux or Slackware. The problem is that many machines that old have only floppy disks, so you can’t use the CD or DVD that comes with this book. In that case, you can try ZipSlack (www.slackware.com/zipslack), which is a Slackware version that comes on about 30+ floppy disk images or a 100MB Zip disk and can run on a 486 with at least 100MB of disk space.

NOTE

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RAM — You should have at least 64MB of RAM to install most Linux distributions and run it in text mode. Slackware might run on 8MB of RAM, but 16MB is considered the minimum. If you are running in graphical mode, you will probably need at least 192MB. The recommended RAM for graphical mode in Fedora is 512MB. A GNOME environment generally requires a bit less memory to run than a KDE environment. If you are using a more streamlined graphical system (that runs X with a small window manager, such as Blackbox), you might get by with as little as 32MB. In that case, you might try Damn Small Linux or Slackware.

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DVD or CD drive — You need to be able to boot up the installation process from a DVD or CD. If you can’t boot from a DVD or CD, there are ways to start the installation from a hard disk or using a PXE install. Some distributions, such as Slackware, let you use floppy disks to boot installation. Once the install is booted, the software can sometimes be retrieved from different locations (over the network or from hard disk, for example).

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Network card — If you are doing an install of one of the distributions for which we provide a scaled-down boot disk, you might need to have an Ethernet card installed to get the software you need over the network. A dial-up connection won’t work for network installs. You don’t have to be connected to the Internet necessarily to do a network install. Some people will download the necessary software packages to a computer on their LAN, and then use that as an install server.

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Disk space — You should have at least 3GB of disk space for an average desktop installation, although installations can range (depending on which packages you choose to install) from 600MB (for a minimal server with no GUI install) to 7GB (to install all packages). You can install the Damn Small Linux live CD to disk with only about 200MB of disk space.

If you’re not sure about your computer hardware, there are a few ways to check what you have. If you are running Windows, the System Properties window can show you the processor you have, as well as the amount of RAM that’s installed. As an alternative, you can boot KNOPPIX and let it detect and report to you the hardware you have. (See Chapter 11 for instructions on running the lspci and dmseg commands in Linux to view information about your computer hardware.)

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Upgrading or Installing from Scratch If you already have a version of the Linux you are installing on your computer, many Linux distributions offer an upgrade option. This lets you upgrade all packages, for example, from version 1 of the distribution to version 2. Here are a few general rules before performing an upgrade: ■

Back up data — There is a possibility that after you finish your upgrade, the operating system won’t boot. It’s always a good idea to back up any critical data and configuration files (in /etc) before doing any major changes to your operating system.

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Remove extra packages — If there are software packages you don’t need, remove them before you do an upgrade. Upgrade processes typically upgrade only those packages that are on your system. Upgrades generally do more checking and comparing than clean installs do, so any package you can remove saves time during the upgrade process.

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Check configuration files — A Linux upgrade procedure often leaves copies of old configuration files. You should check that the new configuration files still work for you.

Installing Linux from scratch goes faster than an upgrade. It also results in a cleaner Linux system. So if you have the choice of backing up your data, or just erasing it if you don’t need it, a fresh install is usually best.

TIP

Some Linux distributions, most notably Gentoo, have taken the approach of ongoing updates. Instead of taking a new release every few months, you simply continuously grab updated packages as they become available and install them on your system.

Dual Booting with Windows or Just Linux? It is possible to have multiple, bootable operating systems on the same computer (using multiple partitions on a hard disk and/or multiple hard disks). Setting up to boot more than one operating system, however, requires some thought. It also assumes some risks. While tools for resizing Windows partitions and setting up multi-boot systems have improved in recent years, there is still considerable risk of losing data on Windows/Linux dual-boot systems. Different operating systems often have different views of partition tables and master boot records that can cause your machine to become unbootable (at least temporarily) or lose data permanently. Always back up your data before you try to resize a Windows (NTFS or FAT) file system to make space for Linux. If you have a choice, install Linux on a machine of its own or at least on a separate hard disk.

CAUTION

If the computer you are using already has a Windows system on it, it’s quite possible that the entire hard disk is devoted to Windows. While you can run a bootable Linux, such as KNOPPIX or Damn Small Linux, without touching the hard disk, to do a more permanent installation you’ll want to find disk space outside of the Windows installation. There are a few ways to do this: ■

Add a hard disk — Instead of messing with your Windows partition, you can simply add a hard disk and devote it to Linux.

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NOTE

Resize your Windows partition — If you have available space on your Windows partition, you can shrink that partition so there is available free space on the disk to devote to Linux. Commercial tools such as Partition Magic from Symantec (www.symantec.com) or Acronis Disk Director (www.acronis.com) are available to resize your disk partitions and set up a workable boot manager. Some Linux distributions (particularly bootable Linuxes used as rescue CDs) include a tool called QTParted that is an open source clone of Partition Magic (which includes software from the Linux-NTFS project for resizing Windows NTFS partitions). An alternative to QTParted is GParted, which is included on the media for this book.

Before you try to resize your Windows partition, you might need to defragment it. To defragment your disk on some Windows systems, so that all of your used space is put in order on the disk, open My Computer, right-click your hard disk icon (typically C:), select Properties, click Tools, and select Defragment Now. Defragmenting your disk can be a fairly long process. The result of defragmentation is that all the data on your disk are contiguous, creating a lot of contiguous free space at the end of the partition. There are cases where you will have to do the following special tasks to make this true: ■

If the Windows swap file is not moved during defragmentation, you must remove it. Then, after you defragment your disk again and resize it, you will need to restore the swap file. To remove the swap file, open the Control Panel, open the System icon, and then click the Performance tab and select Virtual Memory. To disable the swap file, click Disable Virtual Memory.

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If your DOS partition has hidden files that are on the space you are trying to free up, you need to find them. In some cases, you won’t be able to delete them. In other cases, such as swap files created by a program, you can safely delete those files. This is a bit tricky because some files should not be deleted, such as DOS system files. You can use the attrib -s -h command from the root directory to deal with hidden files.

Once your disk is defragmented, you can use one of the commercial tools described earlier (Partition Magic or Acronis Disk Director) to repartition your hard disk to make space for Linux. An open source alternative to those tools is QTParted. Boot KNOPPIX or any of several other bootable Linux distributions (particularly rescue CDs) and run QTParted by selecting System Tools ➪ QTParted from the desktop main menu. From the QTParted window, select the hard disk you want to resize. Then choose Options ➪ Configuration to open a window where you can select the ntfsresize tool to resize your NTFS partition. After you have cleared enough disk space to install Linux (see the disk space requirements in the chapter covering the Linux distribution you’re installing), you can choose your Linux distribution and install it. As you set up your boot loader during installation, you will be able to identify the Windows, Linux, and any other bootable partitions so that you can select which one to boot when your start your computer.

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Using Installation Boot Options Sometimes a Linux installation will fail because the computer has some non-functioning or non-supported hardware. Sometimes you can get around those issues by passing options to the install process when it boots up. Those options can do such things as disable selected hardware (nousb, noscsi, noide, and so on) or not probe hardware when you need to select your own driver (noprobe). Although some of these options are distribution-specific, others are simply options that can be passed to an installer environment that works from a Linux kernel. Chapter 21 includes a list of many boot options that can be used with KNOPPIX and other Linux systems.

Partitioning Hard Drives The hard disk (or disks) on your computer provides the permanent storage area for your data files, applications programs, and the operating system itself. Partitioning is the act of dividing a disk into logical areas that can be worked with separately. In Windows, you typically have one partition that consumes the whole hard disk. However, with Linux there are several reasons you may want to have multiple partitions: ■

Multiple operating systems — If you install Linux on a PC that already has a Windows operating system, you may want to keep both operating systems on the computer. For all practical purposes, each operating system must exist on a completely separate partition. When your computer boots, you can choose which system to run.

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Multiple partitions within an operating system — To protect from having your entire operating system run out of disk space, people often assign separate partitions to different areas of the Linux file system. For example, if /home and /var were assigned to separate partitions, then a gluttonous user who fills up the /home partition wouldn’t prevent logging daemons from continuing to write to log files in the /var/log directory. Multiple partitions also make it easier to do certain kinds of backups (such as an image backup). For example, an image backup of /home would be much faster (and probably more useful) than an image backup of the root file system (/).

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Different file system types — Different kinds of file systems have different structures. File systems of different types must be on their own partitions. In most Linux systems, you need at least one file system type for / (typically ext3 or reiserfs) and one for your swap area. File systems on CD-ROM use the iso9660 file system type.

When you create partitions for Linux, you will usually assign the file system type as Linux native (using the ext2 or ext3 type on some Linux systems, and reiserfs on others). Reasons to use other types include needing a file system that allows particularly long filenames, large file sizes, or many inodes (each file consumes an inode).

TIP

For example, if you set up a news server, it can use many inodes to store news articles. Another reason for using a different file system type is to copy an image backup tape from another operating system to your local disk (such as one from an OS/2 or Minix operating system).

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If you have used only Windows operating systems before, you probably had your whole hard disk assigned to C: and never thought about partitions. With many Linux systems, you have the opportunity to view and change the default partitioning based on how you want to use the system.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

During installation, systems such as openSUSE and Fedora let you partition your hard disk using graphical partitioning tools. The following sections describe how to partition your disk during a Fedora installation or use fdisk to partition your disk. See the section “Tips for Creating Partitions” for some ideas for creating disk partitions.

Partitioning During Fedora Installation During installation, Fedora gives you the opportunity to change how your hard disk is partitioned. The Disk Setup screen is divided into two sections. The top shows general information about each hard disk. The bottom shows details of each partition. Figure 8-1 shows an example of the Disk Setup window.

FIGURE 8-1 Partition your disk during Fedora installation from the Disk Setup window.

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For each of the hard disk partitions, you can see the following: ■

Device — The device name is the name representing the hard disk partition in the /dev directory. Each disk partition device begins with two letters: sd for IDE or SCSI disks, ed for ESDI disks, or xd for XT disks. After that is a single letter representing the number of the disk (disk 1 is a, disk 2 is b, disk 3 is c, and so on). So, for example, to refer to the entire first hard disk, use the device name /dev/sda. To refer to a particular partition on that disk, add the partition number (1, 2, 3, and so on). For example, /dev/sda1 represents the first partition on the first IDE hard drive on the computer.

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Mount Point/Raid/Volume — The directory where the partition is connected into the Linux file system (if it is). You must assign the root partition (/) to a native Linux partition before you can proceed. If you are using RAID or LVM, the name of the RAID device or LVM volume appears here.

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Type — The type of file system that is installed on the disk partition. In many cases, the file system will be Linux (ext3), Win VFAT (vfat), or Linux swap. However, you can also use the previous Linux file system (ext2), physical volume (LVM), or software RAID. The NTFS partition shown in Figure 8-1 for device /dev/sda1 implies that Windows is installed on this computer and this can, therefore, be used as a dual-boot computer with Windows and Linux.

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Format — Indicates whether the installation process should format the hard disk partition. Partitions marked with a check are erased! So, on a multi-boot system, be sure your Windows partitions and other partitions containing data you don’t want to lose are not checked!

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Size (MB) — The amount of disk space allocated for the partition (in megabytes). If you selected to let the partition grow to fill the existing space, this number may be much larger than the requested amount.

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Start /End — Represents the partition’s starting and ending cylinders on the hard disk.

In the top section, you can see each of the hard disks connected to your computer. The drive name is shown first. That’s followed by the model name of the disk. The total amount of disk space, the amount used, and the amount free are shown in megabytes.

Reasons for Partitioning There are different opinions about dividing up a hard disk. Here are some issues: ■

Do you want to install another operating system? If you want Windows on your computer along with Linux, you will need at least one Windows (Win95 FAT16, VFAT, or NTFS type), one Linux (Linux ext3), and one Linux swap partition.

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Is it a multiuser system? If you are using the system yourself, you probably don’t need many partitions. One reason for partitioning an operating system is to keep the entire system from running out of disk space at once. That also serves to put boundaries on what an individual can use up in his or her home directory (although disk quotas are good for that as well).

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Do you have multiple hard disks? You need at least one partition per hard disk. If your system has two hard disks, you may assign one to / and one to /home (if you have lots of users) or /var (if the computer is a server sharing lots of data). With a separate /home partition, you can install another Linux system in the future without disturbing your home directories (and presumably all or most of your user data).

Deleting, Adding, and Editing Partitions Before you can add a partition, there needs to be some free space available on your hard disk. If all space on your hard disk is currently assigned to one partition (as it often is in DOS or Windows), you must delete or resize that partition before you can claim space on another partition. The section “Dual Booting with Windows or Just Linux?” discusses how to add a partition without losing information in your existing single-partition system.

CAUTION

Make sure that any data that you want to keep is backed up before you delete the partition. When you delete a partition, all its data is gone.

Disk Setup is less flexible but more intuitive than the fdisk utility. Disk Setup enables you to delete, add, and edit partitions. If you create multiple partitions, make sure that there is enough room in the right places to complete the installation. For example, most of the Linux software is installed in the /usr directory (and subdirectories), whereas most user data files are eventually added to the /home or /var directory.

TIP

To delete a partition in Disk Setup, do the following: 1. Select a partition from the list of Current Disk Partitions on the main Disk Setup window (click it or use the arrow keys). 2. To delete the partition, click Delete. 3. When asked to confirm the deletion, click Delete. 4. If you made a mistake, click Reset to return to the partitioning as it was when you started Disk Setup.

To add a partition in Disk Setup, follow these steps from the main Disk Setup window: 1. Select New. A window appears, enabling you to create a new partition. 2. Type the name of the Mount Point (the directory where this partition will connect to the Linux file system). You need at least a root (/) partition and a swap partition. 3. Select the type of file system to be used on the partition. You can select from Linux native (ext2 or preferably ext3), software RAID, Linux swap (swap), physical volume (LVM), or Windows FAT (vfat).

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To create a file system type different from those shown, leave the space you want to use free for now. After installation is complete, use fdisk to create a partition of the type you want.

TIP

4. Type the number of megabytes to be used for the partition (in the Size field). If you want this partition to grow to fill the rest of the hard disk, you can put any number in this field (1 will do fine). 5. If you have more than one hard disk, select the disk on which you want to put the partition from the Allowable Drives box. 6. Type the size of the partition (in megabytes) into the Size (MB) box. 7. Select one of the following Additional Size options: ■

Fixed size — Click here to use only the number of megabytes you entered into the Size text box when you create the partition.

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Fill all space up to (MB) — If you want to use all remaining space up to a certain number of megabytes, click here and fill in the number. (You may want to do this if you are creating a VFAT partition up to the 2048MB limit that Disk Setup can create.)

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Fill to maximum allowable size — If you want this partition to grow to fill the rest of the disk, click here.

8. Optionally, select Force to Be a Primary Partition if you want to be sure to be able to boot the partition or Check for Bad Blocks if you want to have the partition checked for errors. 9. Select OK if everything is correct. (The changes don’t take effect until several steps later when you are asked to begin installing the packages.)

To edit a partition in Disk Setup from the main Disk Setup window, follow these steps: 1. Click the partition you want to edit. 2. Click the Edit button. A window appears, ready to let you edit the partition definition. 3. Change any of the attributes (as described in the add partition procedure). For a new install, you may need to add the mount point (/) for your primary Linux partition. 4. Click OK. (The changes don’t take effect until several steps later, when you are asked to begin installing the packages.)

Partitioning with fdisk The fdisk utility is available with almost every Linux system for creating and working with disk partitions in Linux. It does the same job as graphical partitioning tools such as Disk Setup, although it’s no longer offered as an option during Fedora installation.

TIP

During Fedora and other Linux installations that have virtual terminals running, you can switch to a shell (press Ctrl+Alt+F2) and use fdisk manually to partition your hard disk.

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The following procedures are performed from the command line as root user. Remember that any partition commands can easily erase your disk or make it inaccessible. Back up critical data before using any tool to change partitions! Then be very careful about the changes you do make. Keeping an emergency boot disk handy is a good idea, too.

CAUTION

The fdisk command is available on many different operating systems (although it looks and behaves differently on each). In Linux, fdisk is a menu-based command. To use fdisk to list all your partitions, type the following (as root user): # fdisk –l Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot /dev/sda1 * /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3

Start 1 14 4834

End 13 4833 4865

Blocks 104391 38716650 257040

Id 83 83 82

System Linux Linux Linux swap

To see how each partition is being used on your current system, type the following: # df –h Filesystem /dev/sda2 /dev/sda1 none

Size 37G 99M 61M

Used Avail Use% Mounted on 5.4G 30G 16% / 8.6M 86M 10% /boot 0 61M 0% /dev/shm

From the output of df, you can see that the root of your Linux system (/) is on the /dev/sda2 partition and that the /dev/sda1 partition is used for /boot. Before using fdisk to change your partitions, I strongly recommend running the df –h command to see how your partitions are currently being defined. This will help reduce the risk of changing or deleting the wrong partition.

CAUTION

To use fdisk to change your partitions, you need to identify the hard disk you are partitioning. For example, the first IDE hard disk is identified as /dev/sda. So, to partition your first IDE hard drive, you can begin (as root user) by typing: # fdisk /dev/sda

For different hard drive types or numbers, /dev/sda is replaced by the name of the device you want to work with. Table 8-1 shows some of your choices.

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TABLE 8-1

Disk Device Names Device

Description

/dev/sda

For the first IDE or SCSI hard disk; sdb, sdc, and so on for other disks

/dev/rd/c0d0

For a RAID device

/dev/ida/c0d0

Also for a RAID device

After you have started fdisk, type m to see the options. Here is what you can do with fdisk: ■

Delete a partition — Type d and a partition number, and then press Enter. For example, /dev/sda2 would be partition number 2. (The deletion won’t take effect until you write

the change — you can back out up to that point.) ■

Create a partition — If you have free space, you can add a new partition. Type n; l for a logical partition (5 or over) or p for a primary partition (1–4); and a partition number from the available range. Then choose the first cylinder number from those available. (The output from fdisk –l shown earlier will show you cylinders being used under the Start and End columns.) Next, enter the cylinder number the partition will end with (or type the specific number of megabytes or kilobytes you want: for example, +50M or +1024K). You just created an ext3 Linux partition. Again, this change isn’t permanent until you write the changes.

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Change the partition type — Type T to choose the type of file system. Enter the partition number of the partition you want to change. Type the number representing the file system type you want to use in hexadecimal code. (Type L at this point to see a list of file system types and codes.) For a Linux file system, use the number 83; for a Linux swap partition, use 82; and for a windows FAT32 file system, use the letter b.

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Display the partition table — Throughout this process, feel free to type p to display (print on the screen) the partition table as it now stands.

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Quit or save — Before you write your changes, display the partition table again and make sure that it is what you want it to be. If you don’t like a change you make to your partitions, type Q to exit without saving. Nothing changes on your partition table. If your changes are correct, write them to the partition table by typing W. You are warned about how dangerous it is to change partitions, and you must confirm the change.

An alternative to the menu-driven fdisk command is sfdisk, which is a command line–oriented partitioning tool. With sfdisk, you type the full command line to list or change partitions, instead of being taken through a set of prompts (as with fdisk). See the sfdisk man page for details. Linux experts often prefer sfdisk because it can be used in combination with other commands to take and output partitioning information.

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Tips for Creating Partitions Changing your disk partitions to handle multiple operating systems can be very tricky, in part because each operating system has its own ideas about how partitioning information should be handled, as well as different tools for doing it. Here are some tips to help you get it right: ■

If you are creating a dual-boot system, particularly for Windows XP, try to install the Windows operating system first. Otherwise, the Windows installation may make the Linux partitions inaccessible. Choosing a VFAT instead of NTFS file system for Windows will also make sharing files between your Windows and Linux systems easier and more reliable.

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The fdisk man page recommends that you use partitioning tools that come with an operating system to create partitions for that operating system. For example, the DOS fdisk knows how to create partitions that DOS will like, and the Linux fdisk will happily make your Linux partitions. Once your hard disk is set up for dual boot, however, you should probably not go back to Windows-only partitioning tools. Use Linux fdisk or a product made for multi-boot systems (such as Partition Magic).

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You can have up to 63 partitions on an IDE hard disk. A SCSI hard disk can have up to 15 partitions. You won’t need nearly that many partitions.

If you are using Linux as a desktop system, you probably don’t need a lot of different partitions. There are, however, some very good reasons for having multiple partitions for Linux systems that are shared by a lot of users or are public Web servers or file servers. Having multiple partitions within Fedora Linux, for example, offers the following advantages: ■

Protection from attacks — Denial-of-service attacks sometimes take actions that try to fill up your hard disk. If public areas, such as /var, are on separate partitions, a successful attack can fill up a partition without shutting down the whole computer. Because /var is the default location for Web and FTP servers, and expected to hold a lot of data, entire hard disks often are assigned to the /var file system alone.

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Protection from corrupted file systems — If you have only one file system (/), its corruption can cause the whole Linux system to be damaged. Corruption of a smaller partition can be easier to fix and often allows the computer to stay in service while the correction is made.

Table 8-2 lists some directories that you may want to consider making into separate file system partitions. Although people who use Linux systems casually rarely see a need for lots of partitions, those who maintain and occasionally have to recover large systems are thankful when the system they need to fix has several partitions. Multiple partitions can localize deliberate damage (such as denial-ofservice attacks), problems from errant users, and accidental file system corruption.

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TABLE 8-2

Assigning Partitions to Particular Directories Directory

Explanation

/boot

Sometimes the BIOS in older PCs can access only the first 1,024 cylinders of your hard disk. To make sure that the information in your /boot directory is accessible to the BIOS, create a separate disk partition (of about 100MB) for /boot and make sure that it exists below cylinder 1,024. The rest of your Linux system can exist outside of that 1,024-cylinder boundary if you like. Even with several boot images, there is rarely a reason for /boot to be larger than 100MB. (For newer hard disks, you can select the Linear Mode check box during installation. Then the boot partition can be anywhere on the disk.)

/usr

This directory structure contains most of the applications and utilities available to Linux users. Having /usr on a separate partition lets you mount that file system as read-only after the operating system has been installed. This prevents attackers from replacing or removing important system applications with their own versions that may cause security problems. A separate /usr partition is also useful if you have diskless workstations on your local network. Using NFS, you can share /usr over the network with those workstations.

/var

Your FTP (/var/ftp) and Web server (/var/www) directories are, by default in many Linux systems, stored under /var. Having a separate /var partition can prevent an attack on those facilities from corrupting or filling up your entire hard disk.

/home

Because your user account directories are located in this directory, having a separate /home account can prevent a reckless user from filling up the entire hard disk. It also conveniently separates user data from your operating system (for easy backups or new installs).

/tmp

Protecting /tmp from the rest of the hard disk by placing it on a separate partition can ensure that applications that need to write to temporary files in /tmp are able to complete their processing, even if the rest of the disk fills up.

Using LILO or GRUB Boot Loaders A boot loader lets you choose when and how to boot the bootable operating systems installed on your computer’s hard disks. Most Linux systems give you the opportunity to use GRUB or LILO boot loaders. The following sections describe both GRUB and LILO boot loaders. SYSLINUX is another boot loader you will encounter with Linux systems. The SYSLINUX boot loaders are not typically used for installed Linux systems. However, SYSLINUX is commonly used as the boot loader for Linux CDs and DVDs. SYSLINUX is particularly good for booting ISO9660 CD images and for working on older hardware.

NOTE

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Booting Your Computer with GRUB With multiple operating systems installed and several partitions set up, how does your computer know which operating system to start? To select and manage which partition is booted and how it is booted, you need a boot loader. The boot loader that is installed by default with Fedora and other Linux systems is the GRand Unified Boot loader (GRUB). GRUB is a GNU bootloader (www.gnu.org/software/grub) that replaced LILO as the default boot loader in many Linux systems, including Fedora and Ubuntu. GRUB offers the following features: ■

Support for multiple executable formats.

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Support for multi-boot operating systems (such as Fedora, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and other Linux systems).

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Support for non–multi-boot operating systems (such as Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows XP, and OS/2) via a chain-loading function. Chainloading is the act of loading another boot loader (presumably one that is specific to the proprietary operating system) from GRUB to start the selected operating system.

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Support for multiple file system types.

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Support for automatic decompression of boot images.

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Support for downloading boot images from a network.

For more information on how GRUB works, type man grub or info grub. The info command contains more details about GRUB.

Booting with GRUB When you install Linux, you are typically given the option to configure the information needed to boot your computer (with one or more operating systems) into the default boot loader. With GRUB configured, when you boot your computer, the first thing you see after the BIOS loads is the GRUB boot screen (it says GRUB at the top and lists bootable partitions below it); do one of the following: ■

Default — If you do nothing, the default operating system will boot automatically after a few seconds. (The timeout is set by the timeout value, in seconds, in the grub.conf file.)

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Select an operating system — Use the up and down arrow keys to select any of the titles, representing operating systems you can boot, that are shown on the screen. Then press Enter to boot that operating system.

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Edit the boot process — If you want to change any of the options used during the boot process, use the arrow keys to highlight the operating system you want and type e to select it. Follow the next procedure to change your boot options temporarily.

If you want to change your boot options so that they take effect every time you boot your computer, see the section on permanently changing boot options. Changing those options involves editing the /boot/grub/grub.conf file.

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Temporarily Changing Boot Options From the GRUB boot screen, you can select to change or add boot options for the current boot session. First, select the operating system you want (using the arrow keys) and type e (as described earlier). You will see a graphical screen that looks like the one shown in Figure 8-2.

FIGURE 8-2 From the GRUB boot screen, you can select to change boot options.

There are three lines in the example of the GRUB editing screen that identify the boot process for the operating system you chose. The first line (beginning with root) shows that the entry for the GRUB boot loader is on the seventh partition of the first hard disk (hd0,6). GRUB represents the hard disk as hd, regardless of whether it is a SCSI, IDE, or other type of disk. You just count the drive number and partition number, starting from zero (0). The second line of the example (beginning with kernel) identifies the boot image (/boot/ vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.3104.fc7) and several options. The options identify the partition as initially being loaded ro (read-only) and the location of the root file system on a partition with the label root=LABEL=/123. The third line (starting with initrd) identifies the location of the initial RAM disk, which contains the minimum files and directories needed during the boot process. If you are going to change any of the lines related to the boot process, you would probably change only the second line to add or remove boot options. Here is how you do that: 1. Position the cursor on the kernel line and type e. 2. Either add or remove options after the name of the boot image. You can use a minimal set of bash shell command-line editing features to edit the line. You can even use command

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completion (type part of a filename and press Tab to complete it). Here are a few options you may want to add or delete: ■

■

Boot to a shell — If you forgot your root password or if your boot process hangs, you can boot directly to a shell by adding init=/bin/sh to the boot line. (The file system is mounted read-only, so you can copy files out. You need to remount the file system with read/write permission to be able to change files.) Select a run level — If you want to boot to a particular run level, you can add the word linux, followed by the number of the run level you want. For example, to have Fedora Linux boot to run level 3 (multiuser plus networking mode), add linux 3 to the end of

the boot line. You can also boot to single-user mode (1), multiuser mode (2), or X GUI mode (5). Level 3 is a good choice if your GUI is temporarily broken. 3. Press Enter to return to the editing screen. 4. Type b to boot the computer with the new options. The next time you boot your computer, the new options will not be saved. To add options so they are saved permanently, see the next section.

Permanently Changing Boot Options You can change the options that take effect each time you boot your computer by changing the GRUB configuration file. In Fedora and other Linux systems, GRUB configuration centers on the /boot/grub/grub.conf file. The /boot/grub/grub.conf file is created when you install Linux. Here’s an example of that file for Fedora: # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making # changes to this file # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg. # root (hd0,6) # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda7 # initrd /initrd-version.img #boot=/dev/sda default=0 timeout=10 splashimage=(hd0,6)/grub/splash.xpm.gz title Fedora (2.6.20-1.3104.fc7) root (hd0,6) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.20-1.3104.fc7 ro root=LABEL=/123 rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.20-1.3104.fc7.img title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1

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The default=0 line indicates that the first partition in this list (in this case Fedora) will be the one that is booted by default. The line timeout=10 causes GRUB to pause for 10 seconds before booting the default partition. (That’s how much time you have to press e if you want to edit the boot line, or to press arrow keys to select a different operating system to boot.) The splashimage line looks in the seventh partition on the first disk (hd0,6) for the boot partition (in this case /dev/sda7, which is the /boot partition). GRUB loads splash.xpm.gz as the image on the splash screen (/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz). The splash screen appears as the background of the boot screen. GRUB indicates disk partitions using the following notation: (hd0,0). The first number represents the disk, and the second is the partition on that disk. So, (hd0,1) is the second partition (1) on the first disk (0).

NOTE

The two bootable partitions in this example are Fedora and Windows XP. The title lines for each of those partitions are followed by the name that appears on the boot screen to represent each partition. For the Fedora Linux system, the root line indicates the location of the boot partition as the second partition on the first disk. So, to find the bootable kernel (vmlinuz-2.20-1.3104.fc7) and the initrd initial RAM disk boot image that is loaded (initrd-2.6.20-1.3104.fc7.img), GRUB looks in the root of hd0,6 (which is represented by /dev/sda7 and is eventually mounted as /boot). Other options on the kernel line set the partition as read-only initially (ro) and set the root file system to LABEL=/123. For the Windows XP partition, the rootnoverify line indicates that GRUB should not try to mount the partition. In this case, Windows XP is on the first partition of the first hard disk (hd0,0) or /dev/sda1. Instead of mounting the partition and passing options to the new operating system, the chainloader +1 indicates to hand control the booting of the operating system to another boot loader. The +1 indicates that the first sector of the partition is used as the boot loader.

NOTE

Microsoft operating systems require that you use the chainloader to boot them from GRUB because GRUB doesn’t offer native support for Windows operating systems.

If you make any changes to the /boot/grub/grub.conf file, you do not need to load those changes. GRUB automatically picks up those changes when you reboot your computer. If you are accustomed to using the LILO boot loader, this may confuse you at first, as LILO requires you to rerun the lilo command for the changes to take effect.

Adding a New GRUB Boot Image You may have different boot images for kernels that include different features. Here is the procedure for modifying the grub.conf file: 1. Copy the new image from the directory in which it was created (such as /usr/src/ kernels/linux-2.6.20-1/arch/i386/boot) to the /boot directory. Name the file something that reflects its contents, such as bz-2.6.20-1. For example: # cp /usr/src/linux-2.6.20-1/arch/i386/boot/bzImage/boot/bz-2.6.20-1

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2. Add several lines to the /boot/grub/grub.conf file so that the image can be started at boot time if it is selected. For example: title Fedora (My own IPV6 build) root (hd0,1) kernel /bz-2.6.20-1 ro root=/dev/sda7 initrd /initrd-2.6.20-1.img

3. Reboot your computer. 4. When the GRUB boot screen appears, move your cursor to the title representing the new kernel and press Enter.

The advantage to this approach, as opposed to copying the new boot image over the old one, is that if the kernel fails to boot, you can always go back and restart the old kernel. When you feel confident that the new kernel is working properly, you can use it to replace the old kernel or perhaps just make the new kernel the default boot definition.

Booting Your Computer with LILO LILO stands for LInux LOader. Like other boot loaders, LILO is a program that can stand outside the operating systems installed on the computer so you can choose which system to boot. It also lets you give special options that modify how the operating system is booted. On Slackware and some other Linux systems, LILO is used instead of GRUB as the default boot loader. If LILO is being used on your computer, it is installed in either the master boot record or the first sector of the root partition. The master boot record is read directly by the computer’s BIOS. In general, if LILO is the only loader on your computer, install it in the master boot record. If there is another boot loader already in the master boot record, put LILO in the root partition. If you are new to Linux and not familiar with boot loaders, it is highly recommended that you learn and use GRUB instead of LILO. Support for LILO — and inclusion in distributions — has been reduced recently in favor of GRUB.

NOTE

Using LILO When your computer boots with the Fedora version of LILO installed in the master boot record, a graphical Fedora screen appears, displaying the bootable partitions on the computer. Use the up and down arrow keys on your keyboard to select the one you want and press Enter. Otherwise, the default partition that you set at installation will boot after a few seconds. If you want to add any special options when you boot, press Ctrl+X. You will see a text-based boot prompt that appears as follows: boot:

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LILO pauses for a few seconds and then automatically boots the first image from the default bootable partition. To see the bootable partitions again, quickly press Tab. You may see something similar to the following: LILO boot: linux linux-up dos boot:

This example shows that three bootable partitions are on your computer, called linux, linux-up, and dos. The first two refer to two different boot images that can boot the Linux partition. The third refers to a bootable DOS partition (presumably containing a Windows operating system). The first bootable partition is loaded if you don’t type anything after a few seconds. Or you can use the name of the other partition to have that boot instead. If you have multiple boot images, press Shift, and LILO asks you which image you want to boot. Available boot images and other options are defined in the /etc/lilo.conf file.

Setting Up the /etc/lilo.conf File The /etc/lilo.conf file is where LILO gets the information it needs to find and start bootable partitions and images. By adding options to the /etc/lilo.conf file, you can change the behavior of the boot process. The following is an example of some of the contents of the /etc/lilo.conf file: prompt timeout=50 default=linux boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b message=/boot/message linear image=/boot/vmlinuz-18-1.2798.fc6 label=linux initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img read-only root=/dev/hda6 append=”root=LABEL=/” other=/dev/hda1 optional label=dos

With prompt on, the boot prompt appears when the system is booted without requiring that any keys are pressed. The timeout value, in this case 50 tenths of a second (5 seconds), defines how long to wait for keyboard input before booting the default boot image. The boot line indicates that the bootable partition is on the hard disk represented by /dev/hda (the first IDE hard disk).

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Depending upon the distribution, “hda“ may be “sda”. If you are using LILO, the odds are good that you are using an older Linux implementation and thus hda is shown in the example and used in this discussion.

NOTE

The map line indicates the location of the map file (/boot/map, by default). The map file contains the name and locations of bootable kernel images. The install line indicates that the /boot/ boot.b file is used as the new boot sector. The message line tells LILO to display the contents of the /boot/message file when booting (which contains the graphical Fedora boot screen). The linear line causes linear sector addresses to be generated (instead of sector/head/cylinder addresses). In the sample file, there are two bootable partitions. The first (image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1 .2798.fc6) shows an image labeled linux. The root file system (/) for that image is on partition / dev/hda6. Read-only indicates that the file system is first mounted read-only, although it is probably mounted as read/write after a file system check. The inidrd line indicates the location of the initial RAM disk image used to start the system. The second bootable partition, which is indicated by the word other in this example, is on the /dev/hda1 partition. Because it is a Windows XP system, it is labeled a DOS file system. The

table line indicates the device that contains the partition. Other bootable images are listed in this file, and you can add another boot image yourself (like one you create from reconfiguring your kernel as discussed in the next section) by installing the new image and changing lilo.conf. After you change lilo.conf, you then must run the lilo command for the changes to take effect. You may have different boot images for kernels that include different features. The following is the procedure for modifying the lilo.conf file: 1. Copy the new image from the directory in which it was created (such as /usr/src/ kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6/arch/i386/boot) to the /boot directory. Name the file something that reflects its contents, such as zImage-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6. 2. Add several lines to the /etc/lilo.conf file so that the image can be started at boot time if it is selected. For example: image=/boot/zImage-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 label=new

3. Type the lilo -t command (as root user) to test that the changes were okay. 4. Type the lilo command (with no options) for the changes to be installed.

To boot from this new image, either select new from the graphical boot screen or type new and press Enter at the LILO boot prompt. If 5 seconds is too quick, increase the timeout value (such as 100 for 10 seconds). Options that you can use in the /etc/lilo.conf file are divided into global options, per-image options, and kernel options. A lot of documentation is available for LILO. For more details on any of the options described here or for other options, you can see the lilo.conf manual page (type man lilo.conf) or any of the documents in /usr/share/doc/lilo*/doc.

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A few examples follow of global options that you can add to /etc/lilo.conf. Global options apply to LILO as a whole, instead of just to a particular boot image. You can use the default=label option, where label is replaced by an image’s label name, to indicate that a particular image be used as the default boot image. If that option is excluded, the first image listed in the /etc/lilo.conf file is used as the default. For example, to start the image labeled new by default, add the following line to lilo.conf: default=new

Change the delay from 5 seconds to something greater if you want LILO to wait longer before starting the default image. This gives you more time to boot a different image. To change the value from 5 seconds (50) to 15 seconds (150), add the following line: delay=150

You can change the message that appears before the LILO prompt by adding that message to a file and changing the message line. For example, you could create a /boot/boot.message file and add the following words to that file: Choose linux, new, or dos. To have that message appear before the boot prompt, add the following line to /etc/lilo.conf: message=/boot/boot.message

All per-image options begin with either an image= line (indicating a Linux kernel) or other= (indicating some other kind of operating system, such as Windows XP). The per-image options apply to particular boot images rather than to all images (as global options do). Along with the image or other line is a label= line, which gives a name to that image. The name is what you select at boot time to boot that image. Here are some of the options that you can add to each of those image definitions: ■

lock — This enables automatic recording of boot command lines as the defaults for different boot options.

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alias=name — You can replace name with any name. That name becomes an alias for the image name defined in the label option.

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password=password — You can password-protect all images by adding a password option line and replacing password with your own password. The password would have to be entered to boot any of the images.

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restricted — This option is used with the password option. It indicates that a password should be used only if command-line options are given when trying to boot the image.

For Linux kernel images, there are specific options that you can use. These options let you deal with hardware issues that can’t be autodetected, or provide information such as how the root file system is mounted. Here are some of the kernel image-specific options: ■

append — Add a string of letters and numbers to this option that need to be passed to the kernel. In particular, these can be parameters that need to be passed to better define the hard disk when some aspect of that disk can’t be autodetected (for example: append=”hd=64,32,202”).

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ramdisk — Add the size of the RAM disk that you want to use in order to override the size of the RAM disk built into the kernel.

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read-only — Mount the root file system read-only. It is typically remounted read-write

after the disk is checked. ■

read-write — Mount the root file system read/write.

Changing Your Boot Loader If you don’t want to use the GRUB boot loader, or if you tried out LILO and want to switch back to GRUB, it’s not hard to change to a different boot loader on Linux distributions that support both boot loaders. To switch your boot loader from GRUB to LILO, do the following: 1. Configure the /etc/lilo.conf file as described in the “Booting Your Computer with LILO” section. 2. As root user from a Terminal window, type the following: # lilo

The new Master Boot Record is written, including the entries in /etc/lilo.conf. 3. Reboot your computer. You should see the LILO boot screen.

To change your boot loader from LILO to GRUB, do the following: 1. Configure the /boot/grub/grub.conf file as described in the “Booting Your Computer with GRUB” section. 2. You need to know the device on which you want to install GRUB. For example, to install GRUB on the master boot record of the first disk, type the following as root user from a Terminal window: # grub-install /dev/hda

The new Master Boot Record is written to boot with the GRUB boot loader. 3. Reboot your computer. You should see the GRUB boot screen.

If for some reason you don’t see the GRUB boot screen when you reboot, you can use a rescue CD to reboot your computer and fix the problem. When the rescue CD boots up, mount the file system containing the /boot/grub/grub.conf file. Then use the chroot command to change to the root of that file system. Correct the grub.conf file and run grub-install again.

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Configuring Networking If you are connecting your computer to an Ethernet LAN that has a DHCP server available, you probably don’t need to do anything to start up automatically on your LAN and even be connected to the Internet. However, if there is no DHCP server on your LAN and you have to configure your TCP/ IP connection manually, here is the information you will probably be prompted for during Linux installation: ■

IP address — If you set your own IP address, this is the four-part, dot-separated number that represents your computer to the network. It would take more than a few sentences to explain how IP addresses are formed and how you choose them (see Chapter 11 for a more complete description). An example of a private IP address is 192.168.0.1.

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Netmask — The netmask is used to determine what part of an IP address represents the network and what part represents a particular host computer. An example of a netmask for a Class C network is 255.255.255.0. If you apply this netmask to an IP address of 192.168.0.1, for example, the network address would be 192.168.0 and the host address 1. Because 0 and 255 can’t be assigned to a particular host, that leaves valid host numbers between 1 and 254 available for this local network.

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Activate on boot — Some Linux install procedures ask you to indicate if you want the network to start at boot time (you probably do if you have a LAN).

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Set the host name — This is the name identifying your computer within your domain. For example, if your computer were named “baskets” in the handsonhistory.com domain, your full host name may be baskets.handsonhistory.com. You can either set the domain name yourself (manually) or have it assigned automatically, if that information is being assigned by a DHCP server (automatically via DHCP).

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Gateway — This is the IP number of the computer that acts as a gateway to networks outside your LAN. This typically represents a host computer or router that routes packets between your LAN and the Internet.

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Primary DNS — This is the IP address of the host that translates computer names you request into IP addresses. It is referred to as a Domain Name System (DNS) server. You may also have Secondary and Tertiary name servers in case the first one can’t be reached. (Most ISPs will give you two DNS server addresses.)

Configuring Other Administrative Features Depending on which Linux install you are using, there are other types of information you will be asked to enter. These might involve the following: ■

Firewall — Most Linux distributions these days use iptables to configure firewalls. Older Linux systems use ipchains. When you configure a default firewall, you typically choose which ports will be open to outside connections on your system (although there are many other things a firewall can be configured to do as well). The iptables firewall facility is described in Chapter 27.

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Languages — While Linux itself doesn’t include support for lots of different languages, some Linux distributions (such as Fedora) and desktop environments (such as KDE) offer support for many different languages. Nearly all Linux distributions will let you configure language-specific keyboards.

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Root password and additional user — Every Linux system that uses passwords will have you add at least the root user’s password when you install Linux. Some distributions will require that you add at least one additional non-root user as well.

Besides the features just mentioned, every distribution needs to have some initial configuration done before you have a fully functional Linux system. See Chapter 10 for information on basic administrative tasks for Linux.

Installing from the Linux Bible CD or DVD With the knowledge you’ve gained in this chapter, you’re ready to select a Linux distribution to install. Read the descriptions of Linux distributions in the other chapters in Part II of this book. Each chapter includes an On the DVD or On the CD icon box that tells you if the distribution described there is on the CD or DVD or, if it isn’t, where you can get it. If you need more information about the CD or DVD, Appendix A describes the contents of those discs. It also tells you which Linux distributions can be run live or used to install Linux permanently to your hard disk from those two discs.

Summary Although every Linux distribution includes a different installation method, there are many common activities you need to do, regardless of which Linux system you install. For every Linux system, you need to deal with issues of disk partitioning, network configuration, and boot loaders. Linux Bible 2009 Edition includes a DVD and a CD with several different Linux systems you can install. If you prefer, you can instead download and burn your own CDs or DVDs to install Linux. If you go the route of burning your own CDs, this chapter helps you find Linux distributions you can download and describes tools you can use to verify their contents.in this part

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B

efore icons and windows took over computer screens, you typed commands to interact with most computers. On UNIX systems, from which Linux was derived, the program used to interpret and manage commands was referred to as the shell.

IN THIS CHAPTER Understanding the Linux shell Using the Linux shell

No matter which Linux distribution you are using, you can always count on one thing being available to you: the shell. It provides a way to create executable script files, run programs, work with file systems, compile computer code, operate a system, and manage the computer. Although the shell is less intuitive than common graphic user interfaces (GUIs), most Linux experts consider the shell to be much more powerful than GUIs. Shells have been around a long time, and many advanced features have been built into them.

Working with the Linux file system Using the vi text editor in Linux

The Linux shell illustrated in this chapter is called the bash shell, which stands for Bourne Again Shell. The name is derived from the fact that bash is compatible with the one of the earliest UNIX shells: the Bourne shell (named after its creator Stephen Bourne, and represented by the sh command). While bash is included with most distributions, and considered a standard, there are other shells available. Other popular shells include the C shell (csh), which is popular among BSD UNIX users, and the Korn shell (ksh), which is popular among UNIX System V users. Linux also has a tcsh shell (a C shell look-alike) and an ash shell (another Bourne shell lookalike). Several different shells are introduced in this chapter. The odds are strong that the Linux distribution you are using has more than one shell installed by default and available for your use.

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Several major reasons for learning how to use the shell are: ■

You will know how to get around any Linux or other UNIX-like system. For example, I can log in to my Red Hat Enterprise Linux MySQL server, my bootable floppy router/firewall, or my wife’s iMac and explore and use any of those computer systems from a shell.

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Special shell features enable you to gather data input and direct data output between commands and the Linux file system. To save on typing, you can find, edit, and repeat commands from your shell history. Many power users hardly touch a graphical interface, doing most of their work from a shell.

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You can gather commands into a file using programming constructs such as conditional checks, loops, and case statements to quickly do complex operations that would be difficult to retype over and over. Programs consisting of commands that are stored and run from a file are referred to as shell scripts. Most Linux system administrators use shell scripts to automate tasks such as backing up data, monitoring log files, or checking system health.

The shell is a command language interpreter. If you have used Microsoft operating systems, you’ll see that using a shell in Linux is similar to — but generally much more powerful than — the interpreter used to run commands in DOS or in the CMD command interface. You can happily use Linux from a graphical desktop interface, but as you grow into Linux you will surely need to use the shell at some point to track down a problem or administer some features. How to use the shell isn’t obvious at first, but with the right help you can quickly learn many of the most important shell features. This chapter is your guide to working with the Linux system commands, processes, and file system from the shell. It describes the shell environment and helps you tailor it to your needs. It also explains how to use and move around the file system.

Starting a Shell There are several ways to get to a shell interface in Linux. Three of the most common are the shell prompt, Terminal window, and virtual terminal. They’re discussed in the following sections.

Using the Shell Prompt If your Linux system has no graphical user interface (or one that isn’t working at the moment), you will most likely see a shell prompt after you log in. Typing commands from the shell will probably be your primary means of using the Linux system. The default prompt for a regular user is simply a dollar sign: $

The default prompt for the root user is a pound sign (also called a hash mark): #

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In most Linux systems, the $ and # prompts are preceded by your username, system name, and current directory name. For example, a login prompt for the user named jake on a computer named pine with /tmp as the current directory would appear as: [jake@pine tmp]$

You can change the prompt to display any characters you like — you can use the current directory, the date, the local computer name, or any string of characters as your prompt, for example. To configure your prompt, see the “Setting Your Prompt” section later in this chapter. Although there are a tremendous number of features available with the shell, it’s easy to begin by just typing a few commands. Try some of the commands shown in the remainder of this section to become familiar with your current shell environment. In the examples that follow, the dollar ($) and pound (#) symbols indicate a prompt. While a $ indicates that the command can be run by any user, a # typically means you should run the command as the root user — many administrative tools require root permission to be able to run them. The prompt is followed by the command that you type (and then you press Enter or Return, depending on your keyboard). The lines that follow show the output resulting from the command.

Using a Terminal Window With the desktop GUI running, you can open a terminal emulator program (sometimes referred to as a Terminal window) to start a shell. Most Linux distributions make it easy for you to get to a shell from the GUI. Here are two common ways to launch a Terminal window from a Linux desktop: ■

Right-click the desktop. In the context menu that appears, look for Shells, New Terminal, Terminal Window, Xterm, or some similar item and select it.

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Click on the panel menu. Many Linux desktops include a panel at the top or bottom of the screen from which you can launch applications. For example, in systems that use the GNOME desktop, you can select Applications ➪ System Tools ➪ Terminal to open a Terminal window. For Mandriva, select System ➪ Terminals.

In all cases, you should just be able to type a command as you would from a shell with no GUI. Different terminal emulators are available with Linux. One of the following is likely to be the default used with your Linux system: ■

xterm — A common terminal emulator for the X Window System. (In fact, I’ve never seen an X Window System for a major Linux distribution that didn’t include xterm.) Although it doesn’t provide menus or many special features, it is available with most Linux distributions that support a GUI.

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gnome-terminal — The default Terminal emulator window that comes with GNOME. It consumes more system resources than xterm does, and it has useful menus for cutting and pasting, opening new Terminal tabs or windows, and setting terminal profiles.

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konsole — The konsole terminal emulator that comes with the KDE desktop environment. With konsole, you can display multi-language text encoding and text in different colors.

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The differences in running commands within a Terminal window have more to do with the shell you are running than the type of Terminal window you are using. Differences in Terminal windows have more to do with the features each supports — for example, how much output is saved that can be scrolled back to, whether you can change font types and sizes, and whether the Terminal window supports features such as transparency.

Using Virtual Terminals Most Linux systems that include a desktop interface start multiple virtual terminals running on the computer. Virtual terminals are a way to have multiple shell sessions open at once outside of the graphical interface you are using. You can switch between virtual terminals much the same way that you would switch between workspaces on a GUI. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2, F3, F4, and so on up to F6 on Fedora and other Linux systems) to display one of six virtual terminals. The next virtual workspace after the virtual terminals is where the GUI is, so if there are six virtual terminals, you can return to the GUI (if one is running) by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7. (For a system with four virtual terminals, you’d return to the GUI by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F5.)

Choosing Your Shell In most Linux systems, your default shell is the bash shell. To find out what your current login shell is, type the following command: $ echo $SHELL /bin/bash

In this example, it’s the bash shell. There are many other shells, and you can activate a different one by simply typing the new shell’s command (ksh, tcsh, csh, sh, bash, and so forth) from the current shell. For example, to change temporarily to the C shell, type the following command: $ csh Most full Linux systems include all of the shells described in this section. However, some smaller Linux distributions may include only one or two shells. The best way to find out if a particular shell is available is to type the command and see if the shell starts.

NOTE

You might want to choose a different shell to use because: ■

You are used to using UNIX System V systems (often ksh by default) or Sun Microsystems and other Berkeley UNIX–based distributions (frequently csh by default), and you are more comfortable using default shells from those environments.

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You want to run shell scripts that were created for a particular shell environment, and you need to run the shell for which they were made so you can test or use those scripts.

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9

You might simply prefer features in one shell over those in another. For example, a member of my Linux Users Group prefers ksh over bash because he doesn’t like the way aliases are always set up with bash.

Although most Linux users have a preference for one shell or another, when you know how to use one shell, you can quickly learn any of the others by occasionally referring to the shell’s man page (for example, type man bash). Most people use bash just because they don’t have a particular reason for using a different shell. In Chapter 10, you learn how to assign a different default shell for a user. The following sections introduce several of the most common shells available with Linux.

Using bash (and Earlier sh) Shells As mentioned earlier, the name bash is an acronym for Bourne Again Shell, acknowledging the roots of bash coming from the Bourne shell (sh command) created by Steve Bourne at AT&T Bell Labs. Brian Fox of the Free Software Foundation created bash, under the auspices of the GNU Project. Development was later taken over by Chet Ramey at Case Western Reserve University. Bash includes features originally developed for sh and ksh shells in early UNIX systems, as well as some csh features. Expect bash to be the default shell in whatever Linux system you are using, with the exception of some specialized Linux systems (such as those run on embedded devices or run from a floppy disk) that may require a smaller shell that needs less memory and entails fewer features. Most of the examples in this chapter are based on the bash shell.

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The bash shell is worth knowing not only because it is the default in most installations, but because it is the one tested upon with most Linux certification exams.

Bash can be run in various compatibility modes so that it behaves like different shells. It can be run to behave as a Bourne shell (bash +B) or as a POSIX-compliant shell (type bash --posix), for example, enabling it to read configuration files that are specific to those shells and run initialization shell scripts written directly for those shells, with a greater chance of success. All of the Linux distributions included with this book use bash as the default shell, with the exception of some bootable Linux distributions, which use the ash shell instead.

Using tcsh (and Earlier csh) Shells The tcsh shell is the open source version of the C shell (csh). The csh shell was created by Bill Joy and used with most Berkeley UNIX systems (such as those produced by Sun Microsystems) as the default shell. Features from the TENEX and TOPS-20 operating systems (used on PDP-11s in the 1970s) that are included in this shell are responsible for the T in tcsh. Many features of the original csh shell, such as command-line editing and its history mechanism, are included in tcsh as well as in other shells. While you can run both csh and tcsh on most Linux systems, both commands actually point to the same executable file. In other words, starting csh actually runs the tcsh shell in csh compatibility mode.

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Using ash The ash shell is a lightweight version of the Berkeley UNIX sh shell. It doesn’t include many of the sh shell’s basic features, and is missing such features as command histories. Kenneth Almquist created the ash shell used with NetBSD. A port of ash called dash is available in Debian systems. The ash shell is a good shell for embedded systems that have fewer system resources available. The ash shell is about one-seventh the size of bash (about 92K versus 724K for bash). Because of cheaper memory prices these days, however, many embedded and small bootable Linux systems have enough space to include the full bash shell.

Using ksh The ksh shell was created by David Korn at AT&T Bell Labs and is the successor to the sh shell. It became the default and most commonly used shell with UNIX System V systems. The open source version of ksh was originally available in many rpm-based systems (such as Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux) as part of the pdksh package. Now, however, David Korn has released the original ksh shell as open source, so you can look for it as part of a ksh software package in most Linux systems (see www.kornshell.com).

Using zsh The zsh shell is another clone of the sh shell. It is POSIX-compliant (as is bash), but includes some different features, such as spell checking and a different approach to command editing. The first Mac OS X systems used zsh as the default shell, although now bash is used by default.

Exploring the Shell Once you have access to a shell in Linux, you can begin by typing some simple commands. The “Using the Shell in Linux” section later in this chapter provides more details about options, arguments, and environment variables. For the time being, the following sections will help you poke around the shell a bit. If you don’t like your default shell, simply type the name of the shell you want to try out temporarily. To change your shell permanently, use the usermod command. For example, to change to the csh shell for the user named chris, type the following as root user from a shell:

NOTE

# usermod -s /bin/csh chris

Checking Your Login Session When you log in to a Linux system, Linux views you as having a particular identity, which includes your username, group name, user ID, and group ID. Linux also keeps track of your login session: it knows when you logged in, how long you have been idle, and where you logged in from.

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To find out information about your identity, use the id command as follows: $ id uid=501(chris) gid=105(sales) groups=105(sales),4(adm),7(lp)

In this example, the username is chris, which is represented by the numeric user ID (uid) 501. The primary group for chris is called sales, which has a group ID (gid) of 105. The user chris also belongs to other groups called adm (gid 4) and lp (gid 7). These names and numbers represent the permissions that chris has to access computer resources. (Permissions are described in the “Understanding File Permissions” section later in this chapter.)

NOTE

Based on the distribution you are using, the uid numbering may be in the thousands.

You can see information about your current login session by using the who command. In the following example, the -u option says to add information about idle time and the process ID, and -H asks that a header be printed: $ who -uH NAME LINE chris tty1

TIME Jan 13 20:57

IDLE .

PID 2013

COMMENT

The output from this who command shows that the user chris is logged in on tty1 (which is the monitor connected to the computer), and his login session began at 20:57 on January 13. The IDLE time shows how long the shell has been open without any command being typed (the dot indicates that it is currently active). PID shows the process ID of the user’s login shell. COMMENT would show the name of the remote computer the user had logged in from, if that user had logged in from another computer on the network, or the name of the local X display if you were using a Terminal window (such as :0.0).

Checking Directories and Permissions Associated with each shell is a location in the Linux file system known as the current or working directory. Each user has a directory that is identified as the user’s home directory. When you first log in to Linux, you begin with your home directory as the current directory. When you request to open or save a file, your shell uses the current directory as the point of reference. Simply provide a filename when you save a file, and it is placed in the current directory. Alternatively, you can identify a file by its relation to the current directory (relative path), or you can ignore the current directory and identify a file by the full directory hierarchy that locates it (absolute path). The structure and use of the file system is described in detail later in this chapter. To find out what your current directory (the present working directory) is, type the pwd command: $ pwd /usr/bin

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In this example, the current/working directory is /usr/bin. To find out the name of your home directory, type the echo command, followed by the $HOME variable: $ echo $HOME /home/chris

Here the home directory is /home/chris. To get back to your home directory, just type the change directory (cd) command. (Although cd followed by a directory name changes the current directory to the directory that you choose, simply typing cd with no directory name takes you to your home directory). $ cd

NOTE

Instead of typing $HOME, you can use the tilde (~) to refer to your home directory. So, to see your home directory, you could simply type echo ~.

To list the contents of your home directory with the ls command, either type the full path to your home directory, or use the ls command without a directory name. Using the -a option to ls enables you to view the hidden files (known as dot files because they start with that character) as well as all other files. With the -l option, you can see a long, detailed list of information on each file. (You can put multiple single-letter options together after a single dash, for example, -la.) $ ls -la /home/chris total 158 drwxrwxrwx 2 chris drwxr-xr-x 3 root -rw------1 chris -rw-r--r-1 chris -rw-r--r-1 chris -rw-r--r-1 chris drw-r--r-1 chris -rw-rw-r-1 chris ^ col 1

^ col 2

^ col 3

sales root sales sales sales sales sales sales ^ col 4

4096 4096 2204 24 230 124 4096 149872 ^ col 5

May May May May May May May May

12 10 18 10 10 10 10 11

^ col 6

13:55 01:49 21:30 01:50 01:50 01:50 01:50 22:49

. .. .bash_history .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc .kde letter ^ col 7

Displaying a long list (-l option) of the contents of your home directory shows you more about file sizes and directories. The total line shows the total amount of disk space used by the files in the list (158 kilobytes in this example). Directories such as the current directory (.) and the parent directory (..) — the directory above the current directory — are noted as directories by the letter d at the beginning of each entry (each directory begins with a d, and each file begins with a -). The file and directory names are shown in column 7. In this example, a dot (.) represents /home/ chris and two dots (..) represents /home — the parent directory of /chris. Most of the files in this example are dot (.) files that are used to store GUI properties (.kde directory) or shell properties (.bash files). The only non-dot file in this list is the one named letter. Column 3 shows the directory or file owner. The /home directory is owned by root, and everything else is owned by the user chris, who belongs to the sales group (groups are listed in column 4).

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In addition to the d or -, column 1 on each line contains the permissions set for that file or directory. (Permissions and configuring shell property files are described later in this chapter.) Other information in the listing includes the number of links to the item (column 2), the size of each file in bytes (column 5), and the date and time each file was most recently modified (column 6). Here are a few other items related to file and directory listings: ■

The number of characters shown for a directory (4096 bytes in these examples) reflects the size of the file containing information about the directory. While this number can grow above 4096 bytes for a directory that contains a lot of files, this number doesn’t reflect the size of files contained in that directory.

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The format of the time and date column can vary. Instead of displaying “May 12,” the display can be “2009-05-12” depending upon the distribution.

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On occasion, instead of seeing the execute bit (x) set on an executable file, you may see an s in that spot instead. With an s appearing within either the user (-rwsr-xr-x) or group (-rwxr-sr-x) permissions, or both (-rwsr-sr-x), the application can be run by any user, but ownership of the running process is assigned to the application’s user/group instead of that of the user launching the command. This is referred to as a set UID or set GID program, respectively. For example, the mount command has permissions set as -rwsr-xr-x. This allows any user to run mount to list mounted file systems (although you still have to be root to use mount to actually mount file systems).

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If a t appears at the end of a directory, it indicates that the sticky bit is set for that directory (for example, drwxrwxr-t). When a directory’s owner sets a sticky bit on a directory, other users and groups can add files to that directory but not delete files owned by the directory’s owner.

Checking System Activity In addition to being a multiuser operating system, Linux is a multitasking system. Multitasking means that many programs can be running at the same time. An instance of a running program is referred to as a process. Linux provides tools for listing running processes, monitoring system usage, and stopping (or killing) processes when necessary. The most common utility for checking running processes is the ps command. Use it to see which programs are running, the resources they are using, and who is running them. Here’s an example of the ps command: $ ps u USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ jake 2147 0.0 0.7 1836 jake 2310 0.0 0.7 2592

RSS 1020 912

TTY tty1 tty1

STAT START S+ 14:50 R+ 18:22

TIME COMMAND 0:00 -bash 0:00 ps u

In this example, the u option asks that usernames be shown, as well as other information such as the time the process started and memory and CPU usage for processes associated with the current

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user. The processes shown are associated with the current terminal (tty1). The concept of a terminal comes from the old days, when people worked exclusively from character terminals, so a terminal typically represented a single person at a single screen. Now you can have many “terminals” on one screen by opening multiple virtual terminals or Terminal windows on the desktop. On this shell session, there isn’t much happening. The first process shows that the user named jake opened a bash shell after logging in. The next process shows that jake has run the ps u command. The terminal device tty1 is being used for the login session. The STAT column represents the state of the process, with R indicating a currently running process and S representing a sleeping process.

NOTE

Several other values can appear under the STAT column. For example, a plus sign (+) indicates that the process is associated with the foreground operations.

The USER column shows the name of the user who started the process. Each process is represented by a unique ID number referred to as a process ID (PID). (You can use the PID if you ever need to kill a runaway process or send another kind of signal to a process.) The %CPU and %MEM columns show the percentages of the processor and random access memory, respectively, that the process is consuming. VSZ (virtual set size) shows the size of the image process (in kilobytes), and RSS (resident set size) shows the size of the program in memory. START shows the time the process began running, and TIME shows the cumulative system time used. (Many commands consume very little CPU time, as is reflected by 0:00 for processes that haven’t even used a whole second of CPU time.) Many processes running on a computer are not associated with a terminal. A normal Linux system has many processes running in the background. Background system processes perform such tasks as logging system activity or listening for data coming in from the network. They are often started when Linux boots up and run continuously until it shuts down. To page through all the processes running on your Linux system, add the pipe (|) and the less command to ps ux, like this: $ ps ux | less

A pipe (above the backslash character on the keyboard) enables you to direct the output of one command to be the input of the next command. In this example, the output of the ps command (a list of processes) is directed to the less command, which lets you page through that information. Use the spacebar to page through, and type q to end the list. You can also use the arrow keys to move one line at a time through the output.

Exiting the Shell To exit the shell when you are done, type exit or press Ctrl+D. You’ve just seen a few commands that can help you quickly familiarize yourself with your Linux system. There are hundreds of other commands that you can try. You’ll find many in the /bin and /usr/ bin directories, and you can use ls to see a directory’s command list: ls /bin, for example, results in a list of commands in the /bin. Then use the man command (for example, man hostname to see what each command does. Administrative commands are also in /sbin or /usr/sbin directory.

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Using the Shell in Linux When you type a command in a shell, you can include other characters that change or add to how the command works. In addition to the command itself, these are some of the other items that you can type on a shell command line: ■

NOTE

Options — Most commands have one or more options you can add to change their behavior. Options typically consist of a single letter, preceded by a dash. You can also often combine several options after a single dash. For example, the command ls -la lists the contents of the current directory. The -l asks for a detailed (long) list of information, and the -a asks that files beginning with a dot (.) also be listed. When a single option consists of a word, it is usually preceded by a double dash (--). For example, to use the help option on many commands, you enter --help on the command line. You can use the --help option with most commands to see the options and arguments that they support. For example, hostname --help.

■

Arguments — Many commands also accept arguments after certain options are entered or at the end of the entire command line. An argument is an extra piece of information, such as a filename, that can be used by the command. For example, cat /etc/passwd displays the contents of the /etc/passwd file on your screen. In this case, /etc/passwd is the argument.

■

Environment variables — The shell itself stores information that may be useful to the user’s shell session in what are called environment variables. Examples of environment variables include $SHELL (which identifies the shell you are using), $PS1 (which defines your shell prompt), and $MAIL (which identifies the location of your mailbox). See the “Using Shell Environment Variables” section later in this chapter for more information.

You can check your environment variables at any time. Type declare to list the current environment variables. Or you can type echo $VALUE, where VALUE is replaced by the name of a particular environment variable you want to list. And because there are always multiple ways to do anything in Linux, you can also type env to get a succinct list of the current environment variables and their values.

TIP

■

Metacharacters — These are characters that have special meaning to the shell. They can be used to direct the output of a command to a file (>), pipe the output to another command (|), and run a command in the background (&), to name a few. Metacharacters are discussed later in this chapter.

To save you some typing, there are shell features that let you store commands you want to reuse, recall previous commands, and edit commands. You can create aliases that enable you to type a short command to run a longer one. The shell stores previously entered commands in a history list, which you can display and from which you can recall commands. You’ll see how this works a little later in the chapter.

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Unless you specifically change to another shell, the bash shell is the one you use with most Linux systems. The bash shell contains most of the powerful features available in other shells. Although the description in this chapter steps you through many bash shell features, you can learn more about the bash shell by typing man bash, and the sidebar “Getting Help Using the Shell” shows you a few other ways to learn about using the shell.

Locating Commands If you know the directory that contains the command you want to run, one way to run it is to type the full, or absolute, path to that command. For example, you run the date command from the /bin directory by typing: $ /bin/date

Of course, this can be inconvenient, especially if the command resides in a directory with a long path name. The better way is to have commands stored in well-known directories, and then add those directories to your shell’s PATH environment variable. The path consists of a list of directories that are checked sequentially for the commands you enter. To see your current path, type the following: $ echo $PATH /usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/chris/bin

The results show a common default path for a regular Linux user. Directories in the path list are separated by colons. Most user commands that come with Linux are stored in the /bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin directory. Although many graphical commands (that are used with GUIs) are contained in /usr/bin, there are some special X commands that are in the /usr/X11R6/bin directory. The last directory shown is the bin directory in the user’s home directory. If you want to add your own commands or shell scripts, place them in the bin directory in your home directory (such as /home/chris/bin for the user named chris). This directory is automatically added to your path in some Linux systems, although you may need to create that directory or add it to your PATH on other Linux systems. So, as long as you add the command to your bin with execute permission (described in the “Understanding File Permissions” section), you can begin using it by simply typing the command name at your shell prompt. To make commands available to all users, add them to /usr/local/bin.

TIP

Unlike some other operating systems, Linux does not, by default, check the current directory for an executable before searching the path. It immediately begins searching the path, and executables in the current directory are run only if they are in the PATH variable or you give their absolute address. If you are the root user, directories containing administrative commands are typically in your path. These directories include /sbin and /usr/sbin.

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Getting Help Using the Shell

W

hen you first start using the shell, it can be intimidating. All you see is a prompt. How do you know which commands are available, which options they use, or how to use advanced features? Fortunately, lots of help is available. Here are some places you can look to supplement what you learn in this chapter: ■ Check the PATH — Type echo $PATH. You see a list of the directories containing commands that

are immediately accessible to you. Listing the contents of those directories displays most standard Linux commands. ■ Use the help command — Some commands are built into the shell, so they do not appear in a

directory. The help command lists those commands and shows options available with each of them. (Type help | less to page through the list.) For help with a particular built-in command, type help command, replacing command with the name that interests you. The help command works with the bash shell only. ■ Use --help with the command — Many commands include a --help option that you can use to

get information about how the command is used. For example, type date --help | less. The output shows not only options, but also time formats you can use with the date command. ■ Use the man command — To learn more about a particular command, type man command. (Replace

command with the command name you want.) A description of the command and its options appears on the screen. ■ Use the info command — The info command is another tool for displaying information about

commands from the shell. The info command can move among a hierarchy of nodes to find information about commands and other items. Not all commands have information available in the info database, but sometimes more information can be found there than on a man page.

The path directory order is important. Directories are checked from left to right. So, in this example, if there is a command called foo located in both the /bin and /usr/bin directories, the one in /bin is executed. To have the other foo command run, you either type the full path to the command or change your PATH variable. (Changing your PATH and adding directories to it are described later in this chapter.) Not all the commands that you run are located in directories in your PATH variable. Some commands are built into the shell. Other commands can be overridden by creating aliases that define any commands and options that you want the command to run. There are also ways of defining a function that consists of a stored series of commands. Here is the order in which the shell checks for the commands you type: 1. Aliases — Names set by the alias command that represent a particular command and a set of options. (Type alias to see what aliases are set.) Often, aliases enable you to define a short name for a long, complicated command.

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2. Shell reserved word — Words reserved by the shell for special use. Many of these are words that you would use in programming-type functions, such as do, while, case, and else. 3. Function — A set of commands that are executed together within the current shell. 4. Built-in command — A command built into the shell. As a result, there is no representation of the command in the file system. Some of the most common commands you will use are shell built-in commands, such as cd (to change directories), echo (to echo text to the screen), exit (to exit from a shell), fg (to bring a command running in the background to the foreground), history (to see a list of commands that were previously run), pwd (to list the present working directory), set (to set shell options), and type (to show the location of a command). 5. File system command — A command that is stored in and executed from the computer’s file system. (These are the commands that are indicated by the value of the PATH variable.)

To find out where a particular command is taken from, you can use the type command. (If you are using a shell other than bash, use the which command instead.) For example, to find out where the bash shell command is located, type the following: $ type bash bash is /bin/bash

Try these few words with the type command to see other locations of commands: which, case, and return. If a command resides in several locations, you can add the -a option to have all the known locations of the command printed. Sometimes you run a command and receive an error message that the command was not found or that permission to run the command was denied. In the first case, check that you spelled the command correctly and that it is located in your PATH variable. In the second case, the command may be in the PATH variable, but may not be executable. Adding execute permissions to a command is described later in this chapter.

TIP

Rerunning Commands After typing a long or complex command line, it’s annoying to learn that you mistyped something. Fortunately, some shell features let you recall previous command lines, edit those lines, or complete a partially typed command line. The shell history is a list of the commands that you have entered before. Using the history command in a bash shell, you can view your previous commands. Then, using various shell features, you can recall individual command lines from that list and change them however you please. The rest of this section describes how to do command-line editing, how to complete parts of command lines, and how to recall and work with the history list.

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Command-Line Editing If you type something wrong on a command line, the bash shell ensures that you don’t have to delete the entire line and start over. Likewise, you can recall a previous command line and change the elements to make a new command. By default, the bash shell uses command-line editing that is based on the emacs text editor. (Type man emacs to read about it, if you care to.) If you are familiar with emacs, you probably already know most of the keystrokes described here. If you prefer the vi command for editing shell command lines, you can easily make that happen. Add the line:

TIP set -o vi

to the .bashrc file in your home directory. The next time you open a shell, you can use vi commands (as described in the tutorial later in this chapter) to edit your command lines.

To do the editing, you can use a combination of control keys, meta keys, and arrow keys. For example, Ctrl+F means to hold the Ctrl key and type f. Alt+F means to hold the Alt key and type f. (Instead of the Alt key, your keyboard may use a Meta key or the Esc key. On a Windows keyboard, you can use the Windows key.) To try out a bit of command-line editing, type the following: $ ls /usr/bin | sort -f | less

This command lists the contents of the /usr/bin directory, sorts the contents in alphabetical order (regardless of case), and pipes the output to less. The less command displays the first page of output, after which you can go through the rest of the output a line (press Enter) or a page (press the spacebar) at a time (type q when you are done). Now, suppose you want to change /usr/bin to /bin. You can use the following steps to change the command: 1. Press the up arrow to recall the line. 2. Press Ctrl+A. This moves the cursor to the beginning of the command line. 3. Press Ctrl+F or the right arrow (→) key. Repeat this command a few times to position the cursor under the first slash (/). 4. Press Ctrl+D. Type this command four times to delete /usr from the line. 5. Press Enter. This executes the command line.

As you edit a command line, at any point you can type regular characters to add those characters to the command line. The characters appear at the location of your cursor. You can use right (→) and left (←) arrows to move the cursor from one end to the other on the command line. You can also press the up (↑) and down (↓) arrow keys to step through previous commands in the history list to select a command line for editing. (See the discussion on command recall for details on how to recall commands from the history list.)

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There are many keystrokes you can use to edit your command lines. Table 9-1 lists the keystrokes that you can use to move around the command line.

TABLE 9-1

Keystrokes for Navigating Command Lines Keystroke

Full Name

Meaning

Ctrl+F

Character forward

Go forward one character.

Ctrl+B

Character backward

Go backward one character.

Alt+F

Word forward

Go forward one word.

Alt+B

Word backward

Go backward one word.

Ctrl+A

Beginning of line

Go to the beginning of the current line.

Ctrl+E

End of line

Go to the end of the line.

Ctrl+L

Clear screen

Clear the screen and leave line at the top of the screen.

The keystrokes in Table 9-2 can be used to edit command lines.

TABLE 9-2

Keystrokes for Editing Command Lines Keystroke

Full Name

Meaning

Ctrl+D

Delete current

Delete the current character.

Backspace

Delete previous

Delete the previous character.

Ctrl+T

Transpose character

Switch positions of the current and previous characters.

Alt+T

Transpose words

Switch positions of the current and previous characters.

Alt+U

Uppercase word

Change the current word to uppercase.

Alt+L

Lowercase word

Change the current word to lowercase.

Alt+C

Capitalize word

Change the current word to an initial capital letter.

Ctrl+V

Insert special character

Add a special character. For example, to add a Tab character, press Ctrl+V+Tab.

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Use the keystrokes in Table 9-3 to cut and paste text on a command line.

TABLE 9-3

Keystrokes for Cutting and Pasting Text in Command Lines Keystroke

Full Name

Meaning

Ctrl+K

Cut end of line

Cut text to the end of the line.

Ctrl+U

Cut beginning of line

Cut text to the beginning of the line.

Ctrl+W

Cut previous word

Cut the word located behind the cursor.

Alt+D

Cut next word

Cut the word following the cursor.

Ctrl+Y

Paste recent text

Paste most recently cut text.

Alt+Y

Paste earlier text

Rotate back to previously cut text and paste it.

Ctrl+C

Delete whole line

Delete the entire line.

Command-Line Completion To save you a few keystrokes, the bash shell offers several different ways of completing partially typed values. To attempt to complete a value, type the first few characters, and then press Tab. Here are some of the values you can type partially:

TIP

■

Environment variable — If the text you type begins with a dollar sign ($), the shell completes the text with an environment variable from the current shell.

■

Username — If the text you type begins with a tilde (~), the shell completes the text with a username.

■

Command, alias, or function — If the text you type begins with regular characters, the shell tries to complete the text with a command, alias, or function name.

■

Hostname — If the text you type begins with an at (@) sign, the shell completes the text with a hostname taken from the /etc/hosts file. To add hostnames from an additional file, you can set the HOSTFILE variable to the name of that file. The file must be in the same format as /etc/hosts.

Here are a few examples of command completion. (When you see , it means to press the Tab key on your keyboard.) Type the following: $ echo $OS $ cd ~ro $ fing

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The first example causes $OS to expand to the $OSTYPE variable. In the next example, ~ro expands to the root user’s home directory (~root/). Next, fing expands to the finger command. Of course, there will be times when there are several possible completions for the string of characters you have entered. In that case, you can check the possible ways text can be expanded by pressing Esc+? (or by pressing Tab twice) at the point where you want to do completion. This shows the result you would get if you checked for possible completions on $P. $ echo $P<Esc+?> $PATH $PPID $PS1 $PS2 $PS4 $PWD $ echo $P

In this case, there are six possible variables that begin with $P. After possibilities are displayed, the original command line returns, ready for you to complete it as you choose.

Command-Line Recall After you type a command line, that entire command line is saved in your shell’s history list. The list is stored in a history file, from which any command can be recalled to run again. After it is recalled, you can modify the command line, as described earlier. To view your history list, use the history command. Type the command without options or followed by a number to list that many of the most recent commands. For example: $ history 8 382 date 383 ls /usr/bin | sort -a | more 384 man sort 385 cd /usr/local/bin 386 man more 387 useradd -m /home/chris -u 101 chris 388 passwd chris 389 history 8

A number precedes each command line in the list. You can recall one of those commands using an exclamation point (!). Keep in mind that when using an exclamation point, the command runs blind, without presenting an opportunity to confirm the command you’re referencing. There are several ways to run a command immediately from this list, including: ■

!n — Run command number. Replace the n with the number of the command line, and that line is run. For example, here’s how to repeat the date command shown as command

number 382 in the preceding history listing: $ !382 date Thu Oct 29 21:30:06 PDT 2009

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9

!! — Run previous command. Runs the previous command line. Here’s how you’d immediately run that same date command: $ !! date Thu Oct 29 21:30:39 PDT 2009

■

!?string? — Run command containing string. This runs the most recent command that contains a particular string of characters. For example, you can run the date command

again by just searching for part of that command line as follows: $ !?dat? date Thu Oct 29 21:32:41 PDT 2009

Instead of just running a history command line immediately, you can recall a particular line and edit it. You can use the following keys or key combinations to do that, as shown in Table 9-4.

TABLE 9-4

Keystrokes for Using Command History Key(s)

Function Name

Description

Arrow Keys (↑ and ↓)

Step

Press the up and down arrow keys to step through each command line in your history list to arrive at the one you want. (Ctrl+P and Ctrl+N do the same functions, respectively.)

Ctrl+R

Reverse Incremental Search

After you press these keys, you enter a search string to do a reverse search. As you type the string, a matching command line appears that you can run or edit.

Ctrl+S

Forward Incremental Search

Same as the preceding function but for a forward search.

Alt+P

Reverse Search

After you press these keys, you enter a string to do a reverse search. Type a string and press Enter to see the most recent command line that includes that string.

Alt+N

Forward Search

Same as the preceding function but for a forward search.

Another way to work with your history list is to use the fc command. Type fc followed by a history line number, and that command line is opened in a text editor. Make the changes that you want. When you exit the editor, the command runs. You can also give a range of line numbers (for example, fc 100 105). All the commands open in your text editor, and then run one after the other when you exit the editor.

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The history list is stored in the .bash_history file in your home directory. Up to 1,000 history commands are stored for you by default. Some people disable the history feature for the root user by setting the HISTFILE to /dev/null or simply leaving HISTSIZE blank. This prevents information about the root user’s activities from potentially being exploited. If you are an administrative user with root privileges, you may want to consider emptying your file upon exiting as well for the same reasons.

NOTE

Connecting and Expanding Commands A truly powerful feature of the shell is the capability to redirect the input and output of commands to and from other commands and files. To allow commands to be strung together, the shell uses metacharacters. As noted earlier, a metacharacter is a typed character that has special meaning to the shell for connecting commands or requesting expansion.

Piping Commands The pipe (|) metacharacter connects the output from one command to the input of another command. This lets you have one command work on some data, and then have the next command deal with the results. Here is an example of a command line that includes pipes: $ cat /etc/passwd | sort | less

This command lists the contents of the /etc/passwd file and pipes the output to the sort command. The sort command takes the usernames that begin each line of the /etc/passwd file, sorts them alphabetically, and pipes the output to the less command (to page through the output). Pipes are an excellent illustration of how UNIX, the predecessor of Linux, was created as an operating system made up of building blocks. A standard practice in UNIX was to connect utilities in different ways to get different jobs done. For example, before the days of graphical word processors, users created plain-text files that included macros to indicate formatting. To see how the document really appeared, they would use a command such as the following: $ gunzip < /usr/share/man/man1/grep.1.gz | nroff -c -man | less

In this example, the contents of the grep man page (grep.1.gz) are directed to the gunzip command to be unzipped. The output from gunzip is piped to the nroff command to format the man page using the manual macro (-man). The output is piped to the less command to display the output. Because the file being displayed is in plain text, you could have substituted any number of options to work with the text before displaying it. You could sort the contents, change or delete some of the content, or bring in text from other documents. The key is that, instead of all those features being in one program, you get results from piping and redirecting input and output between multiple commands.

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Sequential Commands Sometimes you may want a sequence of commands to run, with one command completing before the next command begins. You can do this by typing several commands on the same command line and separating them with semicolons (;): $ date ; troff -me verylargedocument | lpr ; date

In this example, I was formatting a huge document and wanted to know how long it would take. The first command (date) showed the date and time before the formatting started. The troff command formatted the document and then piped the output to the printer. When the formatting was done, the date and time were printed again (so I knew how long the troff command took to complete). Another useful command to add to the end of a long command line is the mail command. You could add mail -s “Finished the long command” [email protected] to the end of a command line. Then, for example, a mail message is sent to the user you choose after the command completes.

Background Commands Some commands can take a while to complete. Sometimes you may not want to tie up your shell waiting for a command to finish. In those cases, you can have the commands run in the background by using the ampersand (&). Text formatting commands (such as nroff and troff, described earlier) are examples of commands that are often run in the background to format a large document. You also might want to create your own shell scripts that run in the background to check continuously for certain events to occur, such as the hard disk filling up or particular users logging in. Here is an example of a command being run in the background: $ troff -me verylargedocument | lpr &

Other ways to manage background and foreground processes are described in the “Managing Background and Foreground Processes” section later in this chapter.

Expanding Commands With command substitution, you can have the output of a command interpreted by the shell instead of by the command itself. In this way, you can have the standard output of a command become an argument for another command. The two forms of command substitution are $(command) and `command` (backticks, not single quotes). The command in this case can include options, metacharacters, and arguments. Here is an example of using command substitution: $ vi $(find /home | grep xyzzy)

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In this example, the command substitution is done before the vi command is run. First, the find command starts at the /home directory and prints out all files and directories below that point in the file system. The output is piped to the grep command, which filters out all files except for those that include the string xyzzy in the filename. Finally, the vi command opens all filenames for editing (one at a time) that include xyzzy. This particular example is useful if you want to edit a file for which you know the name but not the location. As long as the string is uncommon, you can find and open every instance of a filename existing beneath a point you choose in the file system. (In other words, don’t use grep from the root file system or you’ll match and try to edit several thousand files.)

Expanding Arithmetic Expressions There may be times when you want to pass arithmetic results to a command. There are two forms you can use to expand an arithmetic expression and pass it to the shell: $[expression] or $(expression). Here is an example: $ echo “I am $[2009 - 1957] years old.” I am 52 years old.

The shell interprets the arithmetic expression first (2009 - 1957), and then passes that information to the echo command. The echo command displays the text, with the results of the arithmetic (52) inserted. Here’s an example of the other form: $ echo “There are $(ls | wc -w) files in this directory.” There are 14 files in this directory.

This lists the contents of the current directory (ls) and runs the word count command to count the number of files found (wc -w). The resulting number (14 in this case) is echoed back with the rest of the sentence shown.

Expanding Environment Variables Environment variables that store information within the shell can be expanded using the dollar sign ($) metacharacter. When you expand an environment variable on a command line, the value of the variable is printed instead of the variable name itself, as follows: $ ls -l $BASH -rwxr-xr-x 1 root

root

625516 Dec 5 11:13 /bin/bash

Using $BASH as an argument to ls -l causes a long listing of the bash command to be printed. The following section discusses shell environment variables.

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Creating Your Shell Environment You can tune your shell to help you work more efficiently. Your prompt can provide pertinent information each time you press Enter. You can set aliases to save your keystrokes and permanently set environment variables to suit your needs. To make each change occur when you start a shell, add this information to your shell configuration files.

Configuring Your Shell Several configuration files support how your shell behaves. Some of the files are executed for every user and every shell, while others are specific to the user who creates the configuration file. Table 9-5 shows the files that are of interest to anyone using the bash shell in Linux.

TABLE 9-5

Bash Configuration Files File

Description

/etc/profile

Sets up user environment information for every user. It is executed when you first log in. This file provides values for your path, as well as setting environment variables for such things as the location of your mailbox and the size of your history files. Finally, /etc/profile gathers shell settings from configuration files in the /etc/profile.d directory.

/etc/bashrc

Executes for every user who runs the bash shell, each time a bash shell is opened. It sets the default prompt and may add one or more aliases. Values in this file can be overridden by information in each user’s ~/.bashrc file.

~/.bash_profile

Used by each user to enter information that is specific to his or her own use of the shell. It is executed only once, when the user logs in. By default, it sets a few environment variables and executes the user’s .bashrc file.

~/.bashrc

Contains the information that is specific to your bash shells. It is read when you log in and also each time you open a new bash shell. This is the best location to add environment variables and aliases so that your shell picks them up.

~/.bash_logout

Executes each time you log out (exit the last bash shell). By default, it simply clears your screen.

To change the /etc/profile or /etc/bashrc files, you must be the root user. Users can change the information in the $HOME/.bash_profile, $HOME/.bashrc, and $HOME/.bash_logout files in their own home directories. The following sections provide ideas about items to add to your shell configuration files. In most cases, you add these values to the .bashrc file in your home directory. However, if you administer a system, you may want to set some of these values as defaults for all of your Linux system’s users.

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Setting Your Prompt Your prompt consists of a set of characters that appear each time the shell is ready to accept a command. The PS1 environment variable sets what the prompt contains and is what you interact with most of the time. If your shell requires additional input, it uses the values of PS2, PS3, and PS4. When your Linux system is installed, often a prompt is set to contain more than just a dollar sign or pound sign. For example, in Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, your prompt is set to include the following information: your username, your hostname, and the base name of your current working directory. That information is surrounded by brackets and followed by a dollar sign (for regular users) or a pound sign (for the root user). Here is an example of that prompt: [chris@myhost bin]$

If you change directories, the bin name would change to the name of the new directory. Likewise, if you were to log in as a different user or to a different host, that information would change. You can use several special characters (indicated by adding a backslash to a variety of letters) to include different information in your prompt. These can include your terminal number, the date, and the time, as well as other pieces of information. Table 9-6 provides some examples (you can find more on the bash man page).

TABLE 9-6

Characters to Add Information to the bash Prompt Special Character

Description

\!

Shows the current command history number. This includes all previous commands stored for your username.

\#

Shows the command number of the current command. This includes only the commands for the active shell.

\$

Shows the user prompt ($) or root prompt (#), depending on which user you are.

\W

Shows only the current working directory base name. For example, if the current working directory was /var/spool/mail, this value simply appears as mail.

\[

Precedes a sequence of nonprinting characters. This can be used to add a terminal control sequence into the prompt for such things as changing colors, adding blink effects, or making characters bold. (Your terminal determines the exact sequences available.)

\]

Follows a sequence of nonprinting characters.

\\

Shows a backslash.

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Special Character

Description

\d

Displays the day name, month, and day number of the current date. For example: Sat Jan 23.

\h

Shows the hostname of the computer running the shell.

\n

Causes a newline to occur.

\nnn

Shows the character that relates to the octal number replacing nnn.

\s

Displays the current shell name. For the bash shell, the value would be bash.

\t

Prints the current time in hours, minutes, and seconds (for example, 10:14:39).

\u

Prints your current username.

\w

Displays the full path to the current working directory.

9

If you are setting your prompt temporarily by typing at the shell, you should put the value of PS1 in quotes. For example, you could type export PS1=”[\t \w]\$ “ to see a prompt that looks like this: [20:26:32 /var/spool]$.

TIP

To make a change to your prompt permanent, add the value of PS1 to your .bashrc file in your home directory (assuming that you are using the bash shell). There may already be a PS1 value in that file that you can modify. Refer to the Bash Prompt HOWTO (www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-PromptHOWTO) for information on changing colors, commands, and other features of your bash shell prompt.

Adding Environment Variables You may consider adding a few environment variables to your .bashrc file. These can help make working with the shell more efficient and effective: ■

TMOUT — Sets how long the shell can be inactive before bash automatically exits. The value

is the number of seconds for which the shell has not received input. This can be a nice security feature, in case you leave your desk while you are still logged in to Linux. So as not to be logged off while you are working, you may want to set the value to something like TMOUT=1800 (to allow 30 minutes of idle time). You can use any terminal session to close the current shell after a set number of seconds—for example, TMOUT=30. ■

PATH — As described earlier, the PATH variable sets the directories that are searched for commands you use. If you often use directories of commands that are not in your PATH, you can permanently add them. To do this, add a PATH variable to your .bashrc file. For example, to add a directory called /getstuff/bin, type the following: PATH=$PATH:/getstuff/bin ; export PATH

This example first reads all the current path directories into the new PATH ($PATH), adds the /getstuff/bin directory, and then exports the new PATH.

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CAUTION

Some people add the current directory to their PATH by adding a directory identified simply as a dot (.), as follows:

PATH=.:$PATH ; export PATH This enables you always to run commands in your current directory before evaluating any other command in the path (which people may be used to if they have used DOS). However, the security risk with this procedure is that you could be in a directory that contains a command that you don’t intend to run from that directory. For example, a malicious person could put an ls command in a directory that, instead of listing the content of your directory, does something devious. Because of this, the practice of adding the dot to your path is highly discouraged. ■

WHATEVER — You can create your own environment variables to provide shortcuts in your

work. Choose any name that is not being used and assign a useful value to it. For example, if you do a lot of work with files in the /work/time/files/info/memos directory, you could set the following variable: M=/work/time/files/info/memos ; export M

You could make that your current directory by typing cd $M. You could run a program from that directory called hotdog by typing $M/hotdog. You could edit a file from there called bun by typing vi $M/bun.

Adding Aliases Setting aliases can save you even more typing than setting environment variables. With aliases, you can have a string of characters execute an entire command line. You can add and list aliases with the alias command. Here are some examples of using alias from a bash shell: alias alias alias alias

p=’pwd rm=’rm p=’pwd rm=’rm

; ls –CF’ -i’ ; ls -CF’ -i’

In the first example, the letter p is assigned to run the command pwd, and then to run ls -CF to print the current working directory and list its contents in column form. The second runs the rm command with the -i option each time you simply type rm. (This is an alias that is often set automatically for the root user. Instead of just removing files, you are prompted for each individual file removal. This prevents you from automatically removing all the files in a directory by mistakenly typing something such as rm *.) While you are in the shell, you can check which aliases are set by typing the alias command. If you want to remove an alias, type unalias. (Remember that if the alias is set in a configuration file, it will be set again when you open another shell.)

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Using Shell Environment Variables Every active shell stores pieces of information that it needs to use in what are called environment variables. An environment variable can store things such as locations of configuration files, mailboxes, and path directories. They can also store values for your shell prompts, the size of your history list, and type of operating system. To see the environment variables currently assigned to your shell, type the declare command. (It will probably fill more than one screen, so type declare | more. The declare command also shows functions as well as environment variables.) You can refer to the value of any of those variables by preceding it with a dollar sign ($) and placing it anywhere on a command line. For example: $ echo $USER chris

This command prints the value of the USER variable, which holds your username (chris). Substitute any other value for USER to print its value instead.

Common Shell Environment Variables When you start a shell (by logging in or opening a Terminal window), a lot of environment variables are already set. Table 9-7 shows some variables that are either set when you use a bash shell or that can be set by you to use with different features.

TABLE 9-7

Common Shell Environment Variables Variable

Description

BASH

Contains the full path name of the bash command. This is usually /bin/bash.

BASH_VERSION

A number representing the current version of the bash command.

EUID

This is the effective user ID number of the current user. It is assigned when the shell starts, based on the user’s entry in the /etc/passwd file.

FCEDIT

If set, this variable indicates the text editor used by the fc command to edit history commands. If this variable isn’t set, the vi command is used.

HISTFILE

The location of your history file. It is typically located at $HOME/.bash_history.

HISTFILESIZE

The number of history entries that can be stored. After this number is reached, the oldest commands are discarded. The default value is 1000.

HISTCMD

This returns the number of the current command in the history list.

HOME

This is your home directory. It is your current working directory each time you log in or type the cd command with any options. continued

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TABLE 9-7

(continued)

Variable

Description

HOSTTYPE

A value that describes the computer architecture on which the Linux system is running. For Intel-compatible PCs, the value is i386, i486, i586, i686, or something like i386-linux. For AMD 64-bit machines, the value is x86_64.

MAIL

This is the location of your mailbox file. The file is typically your username in the / var/spool/mail directory.

OLDPWD

The directory that was the working directory before you changed to the current working directory.

OSTYPE

A name identifying the current operating system. For Fedora Linux, the OSTYPE value is either linux or linux-gnu, depending on the type of shell you are using. (Bash can run on other operating systems as well.)

PATH

The colon-separated list of directories used to find commands that you type. The default value for regular users varies for different distributions, but typically includes the following: /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/ usr/X11R6/bin:~/bin. You need to type the full path or a relative path to a command you want to run that is not in your PATH. For the root user, the value also includes /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/ sbin.

PPID

The process ID of the command that started the current shell (for example, the Terminal window containing the shell).

PROMPT_COMMAND

Can be set to a command name that is run each time before your shell prompt is displayed. Setting PROMPT_COMMAND=date lists the current date/time before the prompt appears.

PS1

Sets the value of your shell prompt. There are many items that you can read into your prompt (date, time, username, hostname, and so on). Sometimes a command requires additional prompts, which you can set with the variables PS2, PS3, and so on.

PWD

This is the directory that is assigned as your current directory. This value changes each time you change directories using the cd command.

RANDOM

Accessing this variable causes a random number to be generated. The number is between 0 and 99999.

SECONDS

The number of seconds since the time the shell was started.

SHLVL

The number of shell levels associated with the current shell session. When you log in to the shell, the SHLVL is 1. Each time you start a new bash command (by, for example, using su to become a new user, or by simply typing bash), this number is incremented.

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Variable

Description

TMOUT

Can be set to a number representing the number of seconds the shell can be idle without receiving input. After the number of seconds is reached, the shell exits. This is a security feature that makes it less likely for unattended shells to be accessed by unauthorized people. (This must be set in the login shell for it to actually cause the shell to log out the user.)

UID

The user ID number assigned to your username. The user ID number is stored in the /etc/passwd file.

9

Setting Your Own Environment Variables Environment variables can provide a handy way to store bits of information that you use often from the shell. You can create any variables that you want (avoiding those that are already in use) so that you can read in the values of those variables as you use the shell. (The bash man page lists variables already in use.) To set an environment variable temporarily, you can simply type a variable name and assign it to a value. Here’s an example: $ AB=/usr/dog/contagious/ringbearer/grind ; export AB

This example causes a long directory path to be assigned to the AB variable. The export AB command says to export the value to the shell so that it can be propagated to other shells you may open. With AB set, you go to the directory by typing the following: $ cd $AB

The problem with setting environment variables in this way is that as soon as you exit the shell in which you set the variable, the setting is lost. To set variables permanently, add variable settings to a bash configuration file, as described later in this section. Another option to add the settings to the bash configuration file is to create an executable script file that contains these settings. This is useful when you don’t use the settings all the time, but need to use them occasionally. They are there only for the life of the session after the script file has run.

NOTE

If you want to have other text right up against the output from an environment variable, you can surround the variable in braces. This protects the variable name from being misunderstood. For example, if you want to add a command name to the AB variable shown earlier, you can type the following: $ echo ${AB}/adventure /usr/dog/contagious/ringbearer/grind/adventure

Remember that you must export the variable so that it can be picked up by other shell commands. You must add the export line to a shell configuration file for it to take effect the next time you log in.

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The export command is fairly flexible. Instead of running the export command after you set the variable, you can do it all in one step, as follows: $ export XYZ=/home/xyz/bin

You can override the value of any environment variable. This can be temporary, by simply typing the new value, or you can add the new export line to your $HOME/.bashrc file. One useful variable to update is PATH: $ export PATH=$PATH:/home/xyz/bin

In this example, the /home/xyz/bin directory is added to the PATH, a useful technique if you want to run a bunch of commands from a directory that is not normally in your PATH, without typing the full or relative path each time. If you decide that you no longer want a variable to be set, you can use the unset command to erase its value. For example, you can type unset XYZ, which causes XYZ to have no value set. (Remember to remove the export from the $HOME/.bashrc file — if you added it there — or it will return the next time you open a shell.)

Managing Background and Foreground Processes If you are using Linux over a network or from a dumb terminal (a monitor that allows only text input with no GUI support), your shell may be all that you have. You may be used to a graphical environment where you have a lot of programs active at the same time so that you can switch among them as needed. This shell thing can seem pretty limited. Although the bash shell doesn’t include a GUI for running many programs, it does let you move active programs between the background and foreground. In this way, you can have a lot of stuff running, while selectively choosing the program you want to deal with at the moment. There are several ways to place an active program in the background. One mentioned earlier is to add an ampersand (&) to the end of a command line. Another way is to use the at command to run commands in a way in which they are not connected to the shell. To stop a running command and put it in the background, press Ctrl+Z. After the command is stopped, you can either bring it back into the foreground to run (the fg command) or start it running in the background (the bg command). Keep in mind that any command running in the background might spew output during commands that you run subsequently from that shell. For example, if output appears from a command running in the background during a vi session, simply press Ctrl+L to redraw the screen to get rid of the output.

TIP

To avoid having the output appear, you should have any process running in the background send its output to a file or to null.

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Starting Background Processes If you have programs that you want to run while you continue to work in the shell, you can place the programs in the background. To place a program in the background at the time you run the program, type an ampersand (&) at the end of the command line, like this: $ find /usr > /tmp/allusrfiles &

This example command finds all files on your Linux system (starting from /usr), prints those filenames, and puts those names in the file /tmp/allusrfiles. The ampersand (&) runs that command line in the background. To check which commands you have running in the background, use the jobs command, as follows: $ jobs [1] Stopped (tty output) vi /tmp/myfile [2] Running find /usr -print > /tmp/allusrfiles & [3] Running nroff -man /usr/man2/* >/tmp/man2 & [4]- Running nroff -man /usr/man3/* >/tmp/man3 & [5]+ Stopped nroff -man /usr/man4/* >/tmp/man4

The first job shows a text-editing command (vi) that I placed in the background and stopped by pressing Ctrl+Z while I was editing. Job 2 shows the find command I just ran. Jobs 3 and 4 show nroff commands currently running in the background. Job 5 had been running in the shell (foreground) until I decided too many processes were running and pressed Ctrl+Z to stop job 5 until a few processes had completed. The plus sign (+) next to number 5 shows that it was most recently placed in the background. The minus sign (-) next to number 4 shows that it was placed in the background just before the most recent background job. Because job 1 requires terminal input, it cannot run in the background. As a result, it is Stopped until it is brought to the foreground again. To see the process ID for the background job, add a -l (the lowercase letter L) option to the jobs command. If you type ps, you can use the process ID to figure out which command is for a particular background job.

TIP

Using Foreground and Background Commands Continuing with the example, you can bring any of the commands on the jobs list to the foreground. For example, to edit myfile again, type: $ fg %1

As a result, the vi command opens again, with all text as it was when you stopped the vi job. Before you put a text processor, word processor, or similar program in the background, make sure you save your file. It’s easy to forget you have a program in the background, and you will lose your data if you log out or the computer reboots later on.

CAUTION

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To refer to a background job (to cancel it or bring it to the foreground), use a percent sign (%) followed by the job number. You can also use the following to refer to a background job: ■

% — Refers to the most recent command put into the background (indicated by the plus sign when you type the jobs command). This action brings the command to the foreground.

■

%string — Refers to a job where the command begins with a particular string of characters. The string must be unambiguous. (In other words, typing %vi when there are two vi commands in the background results in an error message.)

■

%?string — Refers to a job where the command line contains a string at any point. The

string must be unambiguous or the match will fail. ■

%-- — Refers to the previous job stopped before the one most recently stopped.

If a command is stopped, you can start it running again in the background using the bg command. For example, take job 5 from the jobs list in the previous example: [5]+ Stopped

nroff -man man4/* >/tmp/man4

Type the following: $ bg %5

After that, the job runs in the background. Its jobs entry appears as follows: [5]

Running

nroff -man man4/* >/tmp/man4 &

Working with the Linux File System The Linux file system is the structure in which all the information on your computer is stored. Files are organized within a hierarchy of directories. Each directory can contain files, as well as other directories. If you were to map out the files and directories in Linux, it would look like an upside-down tree. At the top is the root directory, which is represented by a single slash (/). Below that is a set of common directories in the Linux system, such as bin, dev, home, lib, and tmp, to name a few. Each of those directories, as well as directories added to the root, can contain subdirectories. Figure 9-1 illustrates how the Linux file system is organized as a hierarchy. To demonstrate how directories are connected, the figure shows a /home directory that contains subdirectories for three users: chris, mary, and tom. Within the chris directory are subdirectories: briefs, memos, and personal. To refer to a file called inventory in the chris/memos directory, you can type the full path of /home/chris/memos/inventory. If your current directory is /home/chris/memos, you can refer to the file as simply inventory.

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FIGURE 9-1 The Linux file system is organized as a hierarchy of directories. /

bin/

dev/

briefs/

etc/

home/

chris/

mary/

memos/

root/

tmp/ ...

tom/

personal/

Some of the Linux directories that may interest you include the following: ■

/bin — Contains common Linux user commands, such as ls, sort, date, and chmod.

■

/boot — Has the bootable Linux kernel and boot loader configuration files (GRUB).

■

/dev — Contains files representing access points to devices on your systems. These include terminal devices (tty*), floppy disks (fd*), hard disks (hd*), RAM (ram*), and CD-ROM (cd*). (Users typically access these devices directly through the device files.)

■

/etc — Contains administrative configuration files.

■

/home — Contains directories assigned to each user with a login account (with the excep-

tion of root). ■

/media — Provides a standard location for mounting and automounting devices, such as remote file systems and removable media (with directory names of cdrecorder, floppy, and so on).

■

/mnt — A common mount point for many devices before it was supplanted by the standard /media directory. Some bootable Linux systems still used this directory to mount

hard disk partitions and remote file systems. ■

/proc — Contains information about system resources.

■

/root — Represents the root user’s home directory. The home directory for root does not reside beneath /home for security reasons.

■

/sbin — Contains administrative commands and daemon processes.

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■

/sys — A /proc-like file system, new in the Linux 2.6 kernel and intended to contain

files for getting hardware status and reflecting the system’s device tree as it is seen by the kernel. It pulls many of its functions from /proc. ■

/tmp — Contains temporary files used by applications.

■

/usr — Contains user documentation, games, graphical files (X11), libraries (lib), and a

variety of other user and administrative commands and files. ■

/var — Contains directories of data used by various applications. In particular, this is where you would place files that you share as an FTP server (/var/ftp) or a Web server (/var/www). It also contains all system log files (/var/log) and spool files in /var/spool (such as mail, cups, and news).

The file systems in the DOS or Microsoft Windows operating systems differ from Linux’s file structure, as the “Linux File Systems Versus Windows-Based File Systems” sidebar explains.

Linux File Systems Versus Windows-Based File Systems

A

lthough similar in many ways, the Linux file system has some striking differences from file systems used in MS-DOS and Windows operating systems. Here are a few: ■ In MS-DOS and Windows file systems, drive letters represent different storage devices (for example,

A: is a floppy drive and C: is a hard disk). In Linux, all storage devices are fit into the file system hierarchy. So, the fact that all of /usr may be on a separate hard disk or that /mnt/rem1 is a file system from another computer is invisible to the user. ■ Slashes, rather than backslashes, are used to separate directory names in Linux. So, C:\home\chris

in an MS system is /home/chris in a Linux system. ■ Filenames almost always have suffixes in DOS (such as .txt for text files or .doc for word-processing

files). Although at times you can use that convention in Linux, three-character suffixes have no required meaning in Linux. They can be useful for identifying a file type. Many Linux applications and desktop environments use file suffixes to determine the contents of a file. In Linux, however, DOS command extensions such as .com, .exe, and .bat don’t necessarily signify an executable (permission flags make Linux files executable). ■ Every file and directory in a Linux system has permissions and ownership associated with it. Security

varies among Microsoft systems. Because DOS and MS Windows began as single-user systems, file ownership was not built into those systems when they were designed. Later releases added features such as files and folder attributes to address this problem.

Creating Files and Directories As a Linux user, most of the files you save and work with will probably be in your home directory. Table 9-8 shows commands to create and use files and directories.

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TABLE 9-8

Commands to Create and Use Files Command

Result

cd

Change to another directory.

pwd

Print the name of the current (or present) working directory.

mkdir

Create a directory.

chmod

Change the permissions on a file or directory.

ls

List the contents of a directory.

The following steps lead you through creating directories within your home directory and moving among your directories, with a mention of setting appropriate file permissions: 1. Go to your home directory. To do this, simply type cd. (For other ways of referring to your home directory, see the “Identifying Directories” sidebar.) 2. To make sure that you’re in your home directory, type pwd. When I do this, I get the following response (yours will reflect your home directory): $ pwd /home/chris

3. Create a new directory called test in your home directory, as follows: $ mkdir test

4. Check the permissions of the directory: $ ls -ld test drwxr-xr-x 2 chris

sales

1024

Jan 24 12:17 test

This listing shows that test is a directory (d). The d is followed by the permissions (rwxrxr-x), which are explained later in the “Understanding File Permissions” section. The rest of the information indicates the owner (chris), the group (sales), and the date that the files in the directory were most recently modified (Jan. 24 at 12:17 p.m.). In some Linux systems, such as Fedora, when you add a new user, the user is assigned to a group of the same name by default. For example, in the preceding text, the user chris would be assigned to the group chris. This approach to assigning groups is referred to as the user private group scheme.

NOTE

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For now, type the following: $ chmod 700 test

This step changes the permissions of the directory to give you complete access and everyone else no access at all. (The new permissions should read rwx------.) 5. Make the test directory your current directory as follows: $ cd test

Identifying Directories

W

hen you need to identify your home directory on a shell command line, you can use the following:

■ $HOME — This environment variable stores your home directory name. ■ ~ — The tilde (~) represents your home directory on the command line.

You can also use the tilde to identify someone else’s home directory. For example, ~chris would be expanded to the chris home directory (probably /home/chris). Other special ways of identifying directories in the shell include the following: ■ . — A single dot (.) refers to the current directory. ■ .. — Two dots (..) refer to a directory directly above the current directory. ■ $PWD — This environment variable refers to the current working directory. ■ $OLDPWD — This environment variable refers to the previous working directory before you changed

to the current one.

Using Metacharacters and Operators To make efficient use of your shell, the bash shell lets you use certain special characters, referred to as metacharacters and operators. Metacharacters can help you match one or more files without typing each file completely. Operators enable you to direct information from one command or file to another command or file.

Using File-Matching Metacharacters To save you some keystrokes and to be able to refer easily to a group of files, the bash shell lets you use metacharacters. Anytime you need to refer to a file or directory, such as to list it, open it, or remove it, you can use metacharacters to match the files you want. Here are some useful metacharacters for matching filenames: ■

* — Matches any number of characters.

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■

? — Matches any one character.

■

[...] — Matches any one of the characters between the brackets, which can include a

9

dash-separated range of letters or numbers. Try out some of these file-matching metacharacters by first going to an empty directory (such as the test directory described in the previous section) and creating some empty files: $ touch apple banana grape grapefruit watermelon

The touch command creates empty files. The next few commands show you how to use shell metacharacters with the ls command to match filenames. Try the following commands to see if you get the same responses: $ ls a* apple $ ls g* grape grapefruit $ ls g*t grapefruit $ ls *e* apple grape grapefruit watermelon $ ls *n* banana watermelon

The first example matches any file that begins with an a (apple). The next example matches any files that begin with g (grape, grapefruit). Next, files beginning with g and ending in t are matched (grapefruit). Next, any file that contains an e in the name is matched (apple, grape, grapefruit, watermelon). Finally, any file that contains an n is matched (banana, watermelon). Here are a few examples of pattern matching with the question mark (?): $ ls ????e apple grape $ ls g???e* grape grapefruit

The first example matches any five-character file that ends in e (apple, grape). The second matches any file that begins with g and has e as its fifth character (grape, grapefruit). Here are a couple of examples using braces to do pattern matching: $ ls [abw]* apple banana watermelon $ ls [agw]*[ne] apple grape watermelon

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In the first example, any file beginning with a, b, or w is matched. In the second, any file that begins with a, g, or w and also ends with either n or e is matched. You can also include ranges within brackets. For example: $ ls [a-g]* apple banana grape grapefruit

Here, any filenames beginning with a letter from a through g are matched.

Using File-Redirection Metacharacters Commands receive data from standard input and send it to standard output. Using pipes (described earlier), you can direct standard output from one command to the standard input of another. With files, you can use less than (<) and greater than (>) signs to direct data to and from files. Here are the file-redirection characters: ■

< — Directs the contents of a file to the command. In most cases, this is the default action expected by the command and the use of the character is optional; using more bigfile is the same as more < bigfile.

■

> — Directs the standard output of a command to a file, deleting the existing file.

■

2> — Directs standard error (error messages) to the file.

■

&> — Directs both standard output and standard error to the file.

■

>> — Directs the output of a command to a file, adding the output to the end of the existing file.

Here are some examples of command lines where information is directed to and from files: $ mail root < ~/.bashrc $ man chmod | col -b > /tmp/chmod $ echo “I finished the project on $(date)” >> ~/projects

In the first example, the contents of the .bashrc file in the home directory are sent in a mail message to the computer’s root user. The second command line formats the chmod man page (using the man command), removes extra back spaces (col -b), and sends the output to the file /tmp/chmod (erasing the previous /tmp/chmod file, if it exists). The final command results in the following text being added to the user’s project file: I finished the project on Sat Jan 24 13:46:49 PST 2009

Another type of redirection, referred to as a here document, lets you type text that can be used as standard input for a command. Here documents involve entering two less-than characters (<<), after

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a command, followed by a word. All typing following that word is considered as user input until the word is repeated. Here is an example: $ > > > > > $

mail root cnegus rjones bdecker <
This example sends a mail message to root, cnegus, and rjones usernames. The text entered between <
With these lines added to a script run by the root user, the ed text editor adds the IP address of a DNS server to the /etc/resolv.conf file.

Understanding File Permissions After you’ve worked with Linux for a while, you are almost sure to get a Permission denied message. Permissions associated with files and directories in Linux were designed to keep users from accessing other users’ private files and to protect important system files. The nine bits assigned to each file for permissions define the access that you and others have to your file. Permission bits for a regular file appear as -rwxrwxrwx. For a regular file, a dash appears in front of the nine-bit permissions indicator. Instead of a dash, you might see a d (for a directory), l (for a link), b (for a character device), or c (for a character device).

NOTE

Of the nine-bit permissions, the first three bits apply to the owner’s permission, the next three apply to the group assigned to the file, and the last three apply to all others. The r stands for read, the w stands for write, and the x stands for execute permissions. If a dash appears instead of the letter, it means that permission is turned off for that associated read, write, or execute. Because files and directories are different types of elements, read, write, and execute permissions on files and directories mean different things. Table 9-9 explains what you can do with each of them.

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TABLE 9-9

Setting Read, Write, and Execute Permissions Permission

File

Directory

Read

View what’s in the file.

See what files and subdirectories it contains.

Write

Change the file’s content, rename it, or delete it.

Add files or subdirectories to the directory.

Execute

Run the file as a program.

Change to that directory as the current directory, search through the directory, or execute a program from the directory.

You can see the permission for any file or directory by typing the ls -ld command. The named file or directory appears as those shown in this example: $ ls -ld ch3 test -rw-rw-r-- 1 chris drwxr-xr-x 2 chris

sales sales

4983 1024

Jan 18 22:13 ch3 Jan 24 13:47 test

The first line shows that the ch3 file has read and write permission for the owner and the group. All other users have read permission, which means they can view the file but cannot change its contents or remove it. The second line shows the test directory (indicated by the letter d before the permission bits). The owner has read, write, and execute permission, while the group and other users have only read and execute permissions. As a result, the owner can add, change, or delete files in that directory, and everyone else can only read the contents, change to that directory, and list the contents of the directory. If you own a file, you can use the chmod command to change the permission on it as you please. In one method of doing this, each permission (read, write, and execute) is assigned a number — r=4, w=2, and x=1 — and you use each set’s total number to establish the permission. For example, to make permissions wide open for yourself as owner, you’d set the first number to 7 (4+2+1), and then you’d give the group and others read-only permission by setting both the second and third numbers to 4 (4+0+0), so that the final number is 744. Any combination of permissions can result from 0 (no permission) through 7 (full permission). Here are some examples of how to change permissions on a file (named file) and what the resulting permission would be: # # # #

chmod chmod chmod chmod

777 755 644 000

file file file file

rwxrwxrwx rwxr-xr-x rw-r--r---------

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You can also turn file permissions on and off using plus (+) and minus (–) signs, respectively. This can be done for the owner user (u), owner group (g), others (o), and all users (a). For example, start with a file that has all permissions open (rwxrwxrwx). Run the following chmod commands using minus sign options. The resulting permissions are shown to the right of each command: chmod a-w file chmod o-x file chmod go-rwx file

r-xr-xr-x rwsrwsrwrwx------

Likewise, here are some examples, starting with all permissions closed (---------), where the plus sign is used with chmod to turn permissions on: chmod u+rw files chmod a+x files chmod ug+rx files

rw--------x--x--x r-xr-x---

When you create a file, it’s given the permission rw-r--r-- by default. A directory is given the permission rwxr-xr-x. These default values are determined by the value of umask. Type umask to see what your umask value is. For example: $ umask 022

The umask value masks the permissions value of 666 for a file and 777 for a directory. The umask value of 022 results in permission for a directory of 755 (rwxr-xr-x). That same umask results in a file permission of 644 (rw-r--r--). (Execute permissions are off by default for regular files.) Time saver: Use the -R options of chmod, to change the permission for all of the files and directories within a directory structure at once. For example, if you wanted to open permissions completely to all files and directories in the /tmp/test directory, you could type the following:

TIP

$ chmod -R 777 /tmp/test This command line runs chmod recursively (-R) for the /tmp/test directory, as well as any files or directories that exist below that point in the file system (for example, /tmp/test/hat, /tmp/test/ hat/caps, and so on). All would be set to 777 (full read/write/execute permissions). This is not something you would do on an important directory on a read/write file system. However, you might do this before you create a directory structure on a CD-ROM that you want to be fully readable and executable to someone using the CD-ROM later. The -R option of chmod works best if you are opening permissions completely or adding execute permission (as well as the appropriate read/write permission). The reason is that if you turn off execute permission recursively, you close off your capability to change to any directory in that structure. For example, chmod -R 644 /tmp/test turns off execute permission for the /tmp/test directory, and then fails to change any files or directories below that point. Execute permissions must be on for a directory to be able to change to that directory.

CAUTION

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Moving, Copying, and Deleting Files Commands for moving, copying, and deleting files are fairly straightforward. To change the location of a file, use the mv command. To copy a file from one location to another, use the cp command. To remove a file, use the rm command. Here are some examples: $ $ $ $ $ $

mv mv cp cp rm rm

abc abc abc abc abc *

def ~ def ~

Of the two move (mv) commands, the first moves the file abc to the file def in the same directory (essentially renaming it), whereas the second moves the file abc to your home directory (~). The first copy command (cp) copies abc to the file def in the same directory, whereas the second copies abc to your home directory (~). The first remove command (rm) deletes the abc file; the second removes all the files in the current directory (except those that start with a dot). For the root user, the mv, cp, and rm commands are aliased to each be run with the -i option. This causes a prompt to appear asking you to confirm each move, copy, and removal, one file at a time, and is done to prevent the root user from messing up a large group of files by mistake.

NOTE

Another alternative with mv is to use the -b option. With -b, if a file of the same name exists at the destination, a backup copy of the old file is made before the new file is moved there.

Using the vi Text Editor It’s almost impossible to use Linux for any period of time and not need to use a text editor. This is because most Linux configuration files are plain text files that you will almost certainly need to change manually at some point. If you are using a GUI, you can run gedit, which is fairly intuitive for editing text. There’s also a simple text editor you can run from the shell called nano. However, most Linux shell users will use either the vi or emacs command to edit text files. The advantage of vi or emacs over a graphical editor is that you can use it from any shell, a character terminal, or a character-based connection over a network (using telnet or ssh, for example) — no GUI is required. They also each contain tons of features, so you can continue to grow with them. This section provides a brief tutorial on the vi text editor, which you can use to manually edit a configuration file from any shell. (If vi doesn’t suit you, see the “Exploring Other Text Editors” sidebar for other options.) The vi editor is difficult to learn at first, but once you know it, you never have to use a mouse or a function key — you can edit and move around quickly and efficiently within files just by using the keyboard.

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Exploring Other Text Editors

D

ozens of text editors are available for use with Linux. Here are a few that might be in your Linux distribution, which you can try out if you find vi to be too taxing.

Text Editor

Description

nano

A popular, streamlined text editor that is used with many bootable Linuxes and other limited-space Linux environments. For example, nano is available to edit text files during a Gentoo Linux install process.

gedit

The GNOME text editor that runs in the GUI.

jed

This screen-oriented editor was made for programmers. Using colors, jed can highlight code you create so you can easily read the code and spot syntax errors. Use the Alt key to select menus to manipulate your text.

joe

The joe editor is similar to many PC text editors. Use control and arrow keys to move around. Press Ctrl+C to exit with no save or Ctrl+X to save and exit.

kate

A nice-looking editor that comes in the kdebase package. It has lots of bells and whistles, such as highlighting for different types of programming languages and controls for managing word wrap.

kedit

A GUI-based text editor that comes with the KDE desktop.

mcedit

With mcedit, function keys help you get around and save, copy, move, and delete text. Like jed and joe, mcedit is screen-oriented.

nedit

An excellent programmer’s editor. You need to install the optional nedit package to get this editor.

If you use ssh to log in to other Linux computers on your network, you can use any editor to edit files. A GUIbased editor will pop up on your screen. When no GUI is available, you will need a text editor that runs in the shell, such as vi, jed, or joe.

Starting with vi Most often, you start vi to open a particular file. For example, to open a file called /tmp/test, type the following command: $ vi /tmp/test

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If this is a new file, you should see something similar to the following: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ “/tmp/test” [New File]

The box at the top represents where your cursor is. The bottom line keeps you informed about what is going on with your editing (here you just opened a new file). In between, there are tildes (~) as filler because there is no text in the file yet. Now here’s the intimidating part: There are no hints, menus, or icons to tell you what to do. On top of that, you can’t just start typing. If you do, the computer is likely to beep at you. And some people complain that Linux isn’t friendly. The first things you need to know are the different operating modes: command and input. The vi editor always starts in command mode. Before you can add or change text in the file, you have to type a command (one or two letters and an optional number) to tell vi what you want to do. Case is important, so use uppercase and lowercase exactly as shown in the examples! To get into input mode, type an input command. To start out, type either of the following: ■

a — The add command. After it, you can input text that starts to the right of the cursor.

■

i — The insert command. After it, you can input text that starts to the left of the cursor. When you are in insert mode, -- INSERT -- will appear at the bottom of the screen.

TIP

Type a few words and then press Enter. Repeat that a few times until you have a few lines of text. When you’re finished typing, press Esc to return to command mode. Now that you have a file with some text in it, try moving around in your text with the following keys or letters: Remember the Esc key! It always places you back into command mode.

TIP ■

Arrow keys — Move the cursor up, down, left, or right in the file one character at a time. To move left and right, you can also use Backspace and the spacebar, respectively. If you prefer to keep your fingers on the keyboard, move the cursor with h (left), l (right), j (down), or k (up).

■

w — Moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word.

■

b — Moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous word.

■

0 (zero) — Moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line.

■

$ — Moves the cursor to the end of the current line.

■

H — Moves the cursor to the upper-left corner of the screen (first line on the screen).

■

M — Moves the cursor to the first character of the middle line on the screen.

■

L — Moves the cursor to the lower-left corner of the screen (last line on the screen).

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The only other editing you need to know is how to delete text. Here are a few vi commands for deleting text: ■

x — Deletes the character under the cursor.

■

X — Deletes the character directly before the cursor.

■

dw — Deletes from the current character to the end of the current word.

■

d$ — Deletes from the current character to the end of the current line.

■

d0 — Deletes from the previous character to the beginning of the current line.

To wrap things up, use the following keystrokes for saving and quitting the file: ■

ZZ — Save the current changes to the file and exit from vi.

■

:w — Save the current file but continue editing.

■

:wq — Same as ZZ.

■

:q — Quit the current file. This works only if you don’t have any unsaved changes.

■

:q! — Quit the current file and don’t save the changes you just made to the file.

If you’ve really trashed the file by mistake, the :q! command is the best way to exit and abandon your changes. The file reverts to the most recently changed version. So, if you just did a :w, you are stuck with the changes up to that point. If you just want to undo a few bad edits, type u to back out of your changes.

TIP

You have learned a few vi editing commands. I describe more commands in the following sections. First, however, here are a few tips to smooth out your first trials with vi: ■

Esc — Remember that Esc gets you back to command mode. (I’ve watched people press every key on the keyboard trying to get out of a file.) Esc followed by ZZ gets you out of command mode, saves the file, and exits.

■

u — Type u to undo the previous change you made. Continue to type u to undo the change before that, and the one before that.

■

Ctrl+R — If you decide you didn’t want to undo the previous command, use Ctrl+R for Redo. Essentially, this command undoes your undo.

■

Caps Lock — Beware of hitting Caps Lock by mistake. Everything you type in vi has a different meaning when the letters are capitalized. You don’t get a warning that you are typing capitals — things just start acting weird.

■

:! command — You can run a command while you are in vi using :! followed by a command name. For example, type :!date to see the current date and time, type :!pwd to see what your current directory is, or type :!jobs to see if you have any jobs running in the background. When the command completes, press Enter and you are back to editing the file. You could even use this technique to launch a shell (:!bash) from vi, run a few com-

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mands from that shell, and then type exit to return to vi. (I recommend doing a save before escaping to the shell, just in case you forget to go back to vi.) ■

Ctrl+G — If you forget what you are editing, pressing these keys displays the name of the file that you are editing and the current line that you are on at the bottom of the screen. It also displays the total number of lines in the file, the percentage of how far you are through the file, and the column number the cursor is on. This just helps you get your bearings after you’ve stopped for a cup of coffee at 3 a.m.

Moving Around the File Besides the few movement commands described earlier, there are other ways of moving around a vi file. To try these out, open a large file that you can’t do much damage to. (Try copying /var/log/ messages to /tmp and opening it in vi.) Here are some movement commands you can use: ■

Ctrl+F — Page ahead, one page at a time.

■

Ctrl+B — Page back, one page at a time.

■

Ctrl+D — Page ahead one-half page at a time.

■

Ctrl+U — Page back one-half page at a time.

■

G — Go to the last line of the file.

■

1G — Go to the first line of the file. (Use any number to go to that line in the file.)

Searching for Text To search for the next occurrence of text in the file, use either the slash (/) or the question mark (?) character. Follow the slash or question mark with a pattern (string of text) to search forward or backward, respectively, for that pattern. Within the search, you can also use metacharacters. Here are some examples: ■

/hello — Searches forward for the word hello.

■

?goodbye — Searches backward for the word goodbye.

■

/The.*foot — Searches forward for a line that has the word The in it and also, after that at some point, the word foot.

■

?[pP]rint — Searches backward for either print or Print. Remember that case mat-

ters in Linux, so make use of brackets to search for words that could have different capitalization. After you have entered a search term, simply type / to search forward or ? to search backward for the same term again. The vi editor was originally based on the ex editor, which didn’t let you work in full-screen mode. However, it did enable you to run commands that let you find and change text on one or more lines

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at a time. When you type a colon and the cursor goes to the bottom of the screen, you are essentially in ex mode. Here is an example of some of those ex commands for searching for and changing text. (I chose the words Local and Remote to search for, but you can use any appropriate words.) ■

:g/Local — Searches for the word Local and prints every occurrence of that line from the file. (If there is more than a screenful, the output is piped to the more command.)

■

:s/Local/Remote — Substitutes Remote for the word Local on the current line.

■

:g/Local/s//Remote — Substitutes the first occurrence of the word Local on every line of the file with the word Remote.

■

:g/Local/s//Remote/g — Substitutes every occurrence of the word Local with the word Remote in the entire file.

■

:g/Local/s//Remote/gp — Substitutes every occurrence of the word Local with the word Remote in the entire file, and then prints each line so that you can see the changes (piping it through more if output fills more than one page).

Using Numbers with Commands You can precede most vi commands with numbers to have the command repeated that number of times. This is a handy way to deal with several lines, words, or characters at a time. Here are some examples: ■

3dw — Deletes the next three words.

■

5cl — Changes the next five letters (that is, it removes the letters and enters input mode).

■

12j — Moves down 12 lines.

Putting a number in front of most commands just repeats those commands. At this point, you should be fairly proficient at using the vi command. Once you get used to using vi, you will probably find other text editors less efficient to use. When you invoke vi in many Linux systems, you’re actually invoking the vim text editor, which runs in vi compatibility mode. Those who do a lot of programming might prefer vim because it shows different levels of code in different colors. vim has other useful features, such as the capability to open a document with the cursor at the same place as it was when you last exited that file.

NOTE

Summary Working from a shell command line within Linux may not be as simple as using a GUI, but it offers many powerful and flexible features. This chapter explains how to find your way around the shell in Linux and provides examples of running commands, including recalling commands from a history list, completing commands, and joining commands.

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The chapter describes how shell environment variables can be used to store and recall important pieces of information. It also teaches you how to modify shell configuration files to tailor the shell to suit your needs. Finally, this chapter shows you how to use the Linux file system to create files and directories, use permissions, and work with files (moving, copying, and removing them), and how to edit text files from the shell using the vi command.

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L

inux, like other UNIX-based systems, was intended for use by more than one person at a time. Multiuser features enable many people to have accounts on a single Linux system, with their data kept secure from others. Multitasking enables many people to run many programs on the computer at the same time, with each person running more than one program. Sophisticated networking protocols and applications make it possible for a Linux system to extend its capabilities to network users and computers around the world. The person assigned to manage all of this stuff is called the system administrator. Even if you are the only person using a Linux system, system administration is still set up to be separate from other computer use. To do most administrative tasks, you need to be logged in as the root user (also called the superuser) or temporarily get root permission. Users other than root cannot change, or in some cases even see, some of the configuration information for a Linux system. In particular, security features such as stored passwords are protected from general view.

IN THIS CHAPTER Doing graphical administration Using the root login Understanding administrative commands, config files, and log files Creating user accounts Configuring hardware Managing file systems and disk space Monitoring system performance

Because Linux system administration is such a huge topic, this chapter focuses on the general principles of Linux system administration. In particular, it examines some of the basic tools you need to administer a Linux system for a personal desktop or on a small LAN. Beyond the basics, this chapter also teaches you how to work with file systems and monitor the setup and performance of your Linux system.

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Graphical Administration Tools Many Linux systems come with simplified graphical tools for administering Linux. If you are a casual user, these tools often let you do everything you need to administer your system without editing configuration files or running shell commands. Let’s examine some of the Web-based administration tools available to use with most Linux systems.

Using Web-Based Administration Web-based administration tools are available with many open source projects to make those projects more accessible to casual users. Often all you need to use those tools is a Web browser (such as Firefox), the port number of the service, and the root password. Projects such as Samba and CUPS come with their own Web administration tools. Webmin is a general-purpose tool for administering a variety of Linux system services from your Web browser. The advantages of Web-based administration tools are that you can operate them from a familiar interface (your Web browser) and you can access them remotely. Some Linux distributions come with their own set of graphical administration tools (such as SUSE’s YaST or Red Hat’s system-config tools). You should generally use those instead of any Web-based interface that comes with a project because a distribution’s own tools are usually better integrated with its features for starting and stopping services.

NOTE

Open Source Projects Offering Web Administration Several major open source projects come with Web-based interfaces for configuring those projects. Regardless of which Linux you are using, you can use your Web browser to configure the following projects: ■

Samba — To set up Samba for doing file and printer sharing with Microsoft Windows systems on your LAN, use the Samba SWAT Web-based administration tools from any Web browser. With SWAT installed and running, you can access your Samba server configuration from your Web browser by typing the following URL in the location box: http://localhost:901

NOTE

If you get an Unable to Connect message, it may be because Samba or SWAT is not running. Or your firewall may be blocking access.

The Samba project also offers other graphical tools for administering Samba. You can check them out at http://samba.org/samba/GUI. For descriptions of these tools, see Chapters 15 and 16.

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■

10

CUPS — The Common UNIX Printing Service (CUPS) has its own Web administration tool. With CUPS installed and configured, you can typically use CUPS Web administration by typing the following URL in your Web browser’s location box: http://localhost:631

You use the CUPS administration tool to manage printers and classes and do a variety of administration tasks. CUPS is described in Chapter 15. Samba and CUPS are included with many Linux distributions. Other projects that offer Web-based administration that may or may not be in your Linux distribution include SquirrelMail (a Webmail interface) and Mailman (a mailing list facility). Because many Web browser administrative interfaces send data in clear text, they are most appropriate for use on the local system. However, because they are Web-based, you can also use these interfaces from your LAN or other network. If you plan to expose these administrative interfaces to an untrusted network, however, you should consider encrypting your communications (for example, by using Web-based administration tools over an SSH tunnel).

The Webmin Administration Tool The Webmin facility (www.webmin.com) offers more complete Web-based Linux and UNIX administration features. Although Webmin isn’t delivered with some Linux systems that offer their own graphical administration tools (such as Fedora and RHEL), the Webmin project has ported Webmin to run on more than 70 different operating systems. Supported Linux distributions include SUSE, Red Hat (Fedora and RHEL), Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Slackware, Mandriva, Yellow Dog, and others (see www.webmin.com/support.html for a complete list). Once you get Webmin from Webmin.com and install it, you can use Webmin from your Web browser. To start the Webmin interface, type the following in the Web browser’s location box: http://localhost:10000

After you log in as root user, the main Webmin page displays, as shown in Figure 10-1.

Graphical Administration with Different Distributions Some people fear that once they’ve left the familiar confines of their Microsoft Windows system for Linux, they’ll be stuck doing everything from a command line. To gain a wider audience, commercial Linux distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE created their own sets of graphical tools to provide an easy entry point for new Linux users. The following sections describe the Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux system-config and SUSE’s YaST graphical administration tools.

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FIGURE 10-1 Webmin offers a Web browser interface for administering Linux.

Fedora/RHEL Config Tools A set of graphical tools that comes with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems can be launched from the Administration submenu of the System menu or from the command line. Most of the Fedora and RHEL tools that launch from the command line begin with the system-config string (such as system-config-network). These administrative tasks require root permission; if you are logged in as a regular user, you must enter the root password before the GUI application’s window opens. After you’ve entered that password, most of the system configuration tools will open without requiring you to retype the password during this login session. Look for a yellow badge icon in the upper-right corner of the panel, indicating that you have root authorization. Click the badge to open a pop-up window that enables you to remove authorization. Otherwise, authorization goes away when you close the GUI window. The following list describes many of the graphical tools you can use to administer a Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. Start these windows from the Administration submenu on the System menu. The name of the package that must be installed to get the feature is shown in parenthesis.

NOTE

The availability of the selections described in the following list depends on which features you have installed.

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■

Add/Remove Software (PackageKit) — Launch the Add/Remove Software window for finding, adding, and removing software associated with software repositories configured for your system.

■

Server Settings — Access the following server configuration windows from this submenu: ■

Domain Name System (system-config-bind) — Create and configure zones if your computer is acting as a DNS server.

■

HTTP (system-config-httpd) — Configure your computer as an Apache Web server.

■

NFS (system-config-nfs) — Set up directories from your system to be shared with other computers on your network using the NFS service.

■

Samba NFS (system-config-samba) — Configure Windows (SMB) file sharing. (To configure other Samba features, you can use the SWAT window.)

■

Services (system-config-services) — Display and change which services are running on your Fedora system at different run levels from the Service Configuration window.

■

Authentication (authconfig-gtk) — Change how users are authenticated on your system. Usually, Shadow Passwords and MD5 Passwords are selected. However, if your network supports LDAP, Kerberos, SMB, NIS, or Hesiod authentication, you can select to use any of those authentication types.

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Bootloader — If you have multiple operating systems on your computer, or multiple Linux kernels available to boot in Linux, you can use the Boot Configuration screen to choose which to boot by default. For example, you might have Fedora Linux, SUSE, and Windows XP all on the same hard disk. You could choose which would start automatically (after a set number of seconds), if one wasn’t selected explicitly.

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Date & Time (system-config-date) — Set the date and time or choose to have an NTP server keep system time in sync.

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Display (system-config-display) — Change the settings for your X desktop, including color depth and resolution for your display. You can also choose settings for your video card and monitor.

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Firewall and SELinux (system-config-firewall) — Configure your firewall to allow or deny services to computers from the network.

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Keyboard (system-config-keyboard) — Choose the type of keyboard you are using, based on language.

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Language (system-config-language) — Select the default language used for the system.

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Logical Volume Management (system-config-lvm) — Manage your LVM partitions.

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Network (system-config-network) — Manage your current network interfaces and add interfaces.

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Printing (system-config-printer) — Configure local and network printers.

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Root Password (system-config-rootpassword) — Change the root password.

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■

SELinux Management (system-config-selinux) — Set SELinux enforcing modes and default policy.

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SELinux Troubleshooter (setroubleshoot-server) — Monitor and diagnose SELinux AVC denials.

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Soundcard Detection (system-config-soundcard) — Try to detect and configure your sound card.

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System Log (gnome-utils) — View system log files, and search them for keywords.

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Users & Groups (system-config-users) — Add, display, and change user and group accounts for your Fedora system.

Other administrative utilities are available from the Applications menu on the top panel. Select the System Tools submenu to see some of the following options: ■

Configuration Editor (gconf-editor) — Directly edit the GNOME configuration database.

■

Disk Usage Analyzer (gnome-utils) — Display detailed information about your hard disks and removable storage devices.

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Kickstart (system-config-kickstart) — Create a kickstart configuration file that can be used to install multiple Fedora systems without user interaction.

■

Update System (PackageKit) — Open the Update System window to get updates for all system packages.

Other applications that you add to Fedora or RHEL may also include administrative utilities that will appear in the System Tools submenu.

SUSE YaST Tools The YaST administrative interface is one of the strongest features of SUSE Linux. From a SUSE desktop, open the YaST Control Center by selecting YaST from the Computer menu. Figure 10-2 shows an example of the YaST Control Center that appears. YaST has some useful tools in its Hardware section that enable you to probe your computer hardware. Selecting Hardware Information on my system, for example, enabled me to see that the CDROM drive that YaST detected was available through device /dev/cdrom and that it supported CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD media. I could also see detailed information about my CPU, network card, PCI devices, sound card, and various storage media. YaST also offers interfaces for configuring and starting network devices, as well as a variety of services to run on those devices. In addition, you can use YaST to configure your computer as a client for file sharing (Samba and NFS), mail transfer agent (sendmail), and a variety of network services. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server comes with a wider range of configuration tools that are specifically geared toward server setup, including tools for configuring a mail server, VPN tunnels, and full Samba 3. While other distributions may include proprietary tools, YaST is in a class of its own.

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FIGURE 10-2 Use the YaST Control Center to administer SUSE systems.

Using the root Login Every Linux system starts out with at least one administrative user account (the root user) and possibly one or more regular user accounts (given a name that you choose, or a name assigned by your Linux distribution). In most cases, you log in as a regular user and become the root user to do an administrative task. The root user has complete control of the operation of your Linux system. That user can open any file or run any program. The root user also installs software packages and adds accounts for other people who use the system.

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Think of the root user in Linux as similar to the Administrator user in Windows.

TIP

When you first install most Linux systems, you add a password for the root user. You must remember and protect this password — you will need it to log in as root or to obtain root permission while you are logged in as some other user. Other Linux systems (such as KNOPPIX) start you without an available root password, so you may want to add one when you first start up by typing the following from a Terminal window or other shell: # passwd root Changing password for user root. New UNIX password: ******** Retype new UNIX password: ******** Some bootable Linux distributions give you (as a regular user) the power to run commands as root. You simply have to ask for the privilege using the sudo command. For example, from a Terminal window, to open a shell as root, type the following:

NOTE

$ sudo su # You’ll find out more about the sudo command later in this chapter.

The home directory for the root user is typically /root. The home directory and other information associated with the root user account are located in the /etc/passwd file. Here’s what the root entry looks like in the /etc/passwd file: root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

This shows that for the user named root the user ID is set to 0 (root user), the group ID is set to 0 (root group), the home directory is /root, and the shell for that user is /bin/bash. (We’re using a shadow password file to store encrypted password data, so the password field here contains an x.) You can change the home directory or the shell used by editing the values in this file. A better way to change these values, however, is to use the usermod command (see the “Modifying Users with usermod” section later in this chapter). By default, the root account is disabled in Ubuntu. This means that even though the account exists, you cannot log in using it or use su to become the root user. This adds an additional level of security to Ubuntu, and requires you to use sudo before each command you want to execute as the root user.

NOTE

Becoming Root from the Shell (su Command) Although you can become the superuser by logging in as root, sometimes that is not convenient. For example, you may be logged in to a regular user account and just want to make a quick administrative change to your system without having to log out and log back in. Or, you may need to log in over the network to make a change to a Linux system but find that the system doesn’t allow root users in from over the network (a common practice in the days before secure shells were available).

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The solution is to use the su command. From any Terminal window or shell, you can simply type the following: $ su Password: ****** #

When you are prompted, type in the root user’s password. The prompt for the regular user ($) changes to the superuser prompt (#). At this point, you have full permission to run any command and use any file on the system. However, one thing that the su command doesn’t do when used this way is read in the root user’s environment. As a result, you may type a command that you know is available and get the message Command Not Found. To fix this problem, use the su command with the dash (-) option instead, like this: $ su Password: ****** #

You still need to type the password, but after that, everything that normally happens at login for the root user happens after the su command is completed. Your current directory will be root’s home directory (probably /root), and things such as the root user’s PATH variable will be used. If you become the root user by just typing su, rather than su -, you won’t change directories or the environment of the current login session.

NOTE

While becoming root is strongly discouraged with Ubuntu, you can do so if you must with the command sudo –i –l root and giving the password.

You can also use the su command to become a user other than root. This is useful for troubleshooting a problem that is being experienced by a particular user, but not by others on the computer (such as an inability to print or send e-mail). For example, to have the permissions of a user named jsmith, you’d type the following: $ su - jsmith

Even if you were root user before you typed this command, afterward you would have only the permissions to open files and run programs that are available to jsmith. As root user, however, after you type the su command to become another user, you don’t need a password to continue. If you type that command as a regular user, you must type the new user’s password. When you are finished using superuser permissions, return to the previous shell by exiting the current shell. Do this by pressing Ctrl+D or by typing exit. If you are the administrator for a computer that is accessible to multiple users, don’t leave a root shell open on someone else’s screen (unless you want to let that person do anything he wants to the computer)!

Allowing Limited Administrative Access As mentioned earlier, when you run GUI tools as a regular user (from Fedora, SUSE, or some other Linux systems), you are prompted for the root password before you are able to access the tool. By

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entering the root password, you are given root privilege for that task. In the case of Fedora, after you enter the password a badge icon appears in the top panel, indicating that root authorization is still available for other GUI tools to run from that desktop session. A particular user can also be given administrative permissions for particular tasks without being given the root password. For example, a system administrator can add a user to particular groups, such as modem, disk, users, cdrom, ftp, mail, or www, and then open group permission to use those services. Or, an administrator can add a user to the wheel group and add entries to the /etc/sudoers file to allow that user to use the sudo command to run individual commands as root. (See the description of sudo later in this chapter.)

NOTE

The wheel group does not exist in all distributions. In Ubuntu, for example, wheel is not created automatically.

A feature available in some Linux distributions that adds an additional level of security is Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux). With SELinux, instead of one all-powerful root user account, multiple roles can be defined to protect selected files and services. In that way, for example, if someone cracks your Web server, he does not automatically have access to your mail server, user passwords, or other services running on the computer.

Exploring Administrative Commands, Configuration Files, and Log Files You can expect to find many commands, configuration files, and log files in the same places in the file system, regardless of which Linux distribution you are using. The following sections give you some pointers on where to look for these important elements. If GUI administrative tools for Linux have become so good, why do you need to know about administrative files? For one thing, while GUI tools differ among Linux versions, many underlying configuration files are the same. So, if you learn to work with them, you can work with almost any Linux system. Also, if a feature is broken or if you need to do something that’s not supported by the GUI, when you ask for help, Linux experts almost always tell you how to change the configuration file directly.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

Administrative Commands Only the root user is intended to use many administrative commands. When you log in as root (or use su - from the shell to become root), your $PATH variable is set to include some directories that contain commands for the root user. These include the following: ■

/sbin — Contains commands for modifying your disk partitions (such as fdisk), checking file systems (fsck), and changing system states (init).

■

/usr/sbin — Contains commands for managing user accounts (such as useradd) and adding mount points for automounting file systems (automount). Commands that run as daemon processes are also contained in this directory. (Look for commands that end in d, such as sshd, pppd, and cupsd.)

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Some administrative commands are contained in regular user directories (such as /bin and /usr/ bin). This is especially true of commands that have some options available to everyone. An example is the /bin/mount command, which anyone can use to list mounted file systems, but only root can use to mount file systems. (Some desktops, however, are configured to let regular users use mount to mount CDs, DVDs, or other removable media by adding keywords to the /etc/fstab file.)

NOTE

See the section “Mounting File Systems” later in this chapter for instructions on how to mount a file system.

To find commands intended primarily for the system administrator, check out the section 8 manual pages (usually in /usr/share/man/man8). They contain descriptions and options for most Linux administrative commands. Some third-party applications add administrative commands to directories that are not in your PATH. For example, an application may put commands in /usr/local/bin, /opt/bin, or /usr/ local/sbin. Some Linux distributions automatically add those directories to your PATH, usually before your standard bin and sbin directories. In that way, commands installed to those directories

are not only accessible, but can also override commands of the same name in other directories.

Administrative Configuration Files Configuration files are another mainstay of Linux administration. Almost everything you set up for your particular computer — user accounts, network addresses, or GUI preferences — is stored in plain-text files. This has some advantages and some disadvantages. The advantage of plain-text files is that it’s easy to read and change them. Any text editor will do. The downside, however, is that as you edit configuration files, no error checking is going on. You have to run the program that reads these files (such as a network daemon or the X desktop) to find out whether you set up the files correctly. There are no standards for the structure of configuration files, so you need to learn the format of each file individually. A comma or a quote in the wrong place can sometimes cause a whole interface to fail. Some software packages offer a command to test the sanity of the configuration file tied to a package before you start a service. For example, the testparm command is used with Samba to check the sanity of your smb.conf file. Other times, the daemon process providing a service offers an option for checking your config file. For example, run httpd -t to check your Apache Web server configuration before starting your Web server.

NOTE

Throughout this book you’ll find descriptions of the configuration files you need to set up the different features that make up Linux systems. The two major locations of configuration files are your home directory (where your personal configuration files are kept) and the /etc directory (which holds system-wide configuration files). Following are descriptions of directories (and subdirectories) that contain useful configuration files. (Refer to Table 10-1 for some individual configuration files in /etc that are of particular interest.) Viewing the contents of Linux configuration files can teach you a lot about administering Linux systems.

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■

$HOME — All users store information in their home directories that directs how their login accounts behave. Most configuration files in $HOME begin with a dot (.), so they don’t appear in a user’s directory when you use a standard ls command (you need to type ls -a to see them). Likewise, dot files and directories won’t show up in most file manager

windows by default. There are dot files that define how each user’s shell behaves, the desktop look-and-feel, and options used with your text editor. There are even files such as .ssh/* and .rhosts that configure network permissions for each user. (To see the name of your home directory, type echo $HOME from a shell.) ■

/etc — This directory contains most of the basic Linux system-configuration files. Table 10-1 shows some /etc configuration files of interest.

■

/etc/cron* — Directories in this set contain files that define how the crond utility runs applications on a daily (cron.daily), hourly (cron.hourly), monthly (cron.monthly), or weekly (cron.weekly) schedule.

■

/etc/cups — Contains files used to configure the CUPS printing service.

■

/etc/default — Contains files that set default values for various utilities. For example, the file for the useradd command defines the default group number, home directory, password expiration date, shell, and skeleton directory (/etc/skel) that are used when creat-

ing a new user account. ■

/etc/httpd — Contains a variety of files used to configure the behavior of your Apache Web server (specifically, the httpd daemon process). (On some Linux systems, /etc/ apache is used instead.)

■

/etc/init.d — Contains the permanent copies of System V–style run-level scripts. These scripts are often linked from the /etc/rc?.d directories to have each service associated with a script started or stopped for the particular run level. The ? is replaced by the run-level number (0 through 6). (Slackware puts its run-level scripts in the /etc/rc.d

directory.) ■

/etc/mail — Contains files used to configure your sendmail mail service.

■

/etc/pcmcia — Contains configuration files that allow you to have a variety of PCMCIA

cards configured for your computer. (PCMCIA slots are those openings on your laptop that enable you to have credit card–sized cards attached to your computer. You can attach devices such as modems and external CD-ROMs.) ■

/etc/postfix — Contains configuration files for the postfix mail transport agent.

■

/etc/ppp — Contains several configuration files used to set up Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) so that you can have your computer dial out to the Internet.

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/etc/rc?.d — There is a separate rc?.d directory for each valid system state: rc0.d (shutdown state), rc1.d (single-user state), rc2.d (multiuser state), rc3.d (multiuser plus networking state), rc4.d (user-defined state), rc5.d (multiuser, networking, plus GUI login state), and rc6.d (reboot state). Some Linux distros, such as Slackware, put most of the start-up scripts directly in /etc/rc.d, without the runlevel notation.

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/etc/security — Contains files that set a variety of default security conditions for your computer. These files are part of the pam (pluggable authentication modules) package.

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10

/etc/skel — Any files contained in this directory are automatically copied to a user’s

home directory when that user is added to the system. By default, most of these files are dot (.) files, such as .kde (a directory for setting KDE desktop defaults) and .bashrc (for setting default values used with the bash shell). ■

/etc/sysconfig — Contains important system configuration files that are created and maintained by various services (including iptables, samba, and most networking services). These files are critical for Linux distributions that use GUI administration tools but are not used on other Linux systems at all.

■

/etc/xinetd.d — Contains a set of files, each of which defines a network service that the xinetd daemon listens for on a particular port. When the xinetd daemon process receives a request for a service, it uses the information in these files to determine which daemon processes to start to handle the request.

TABLE 10-1

/etc Configuration Files of Interest File

Description

aliases

Can contain distribution lists used by the Linux mail service. (This file may be located in /etc/mail.)

bashrc

Sets system-wide defaults for bash shell users. (This may be called bash. bashrc on some Linux distributions.)

crontab

Sets the cron environment and times for running automated tasks.

csh.cshrc (or cshrc)

Sets system-wide defaults for csh (C shell) users.

exports

Contains a list of local directories that are available to be shared by remote computers using the Network File System (NFS).

fstab

Identifies the devices for common storage media (hard disk, floppy, CD-ROM, and so on) and locations where they are mounted in the Linux system. This is used by the mount command to choose which file systems to mount when the system first boots.

group

Identifies group names and group IDs (GIDs) that are defined on the systems. Group permissions in Linux are defined by the second of three sets of rwx (read, write, execute) bits associated with each file and directory.

gshadow

Contains shadow passwords for groups.

host.conf

Sets the locations in which domain names (for example, redhat.com) are searched for on TCP/IP networks (such as the Internet). By default, the local hosts file is searched and then any name server entries in resolv.conf.

hosts

Contains IP addresses and host names that you can reach from your computer. (Usually this file is used just to store names of computers on your LAN or small private network.) continued

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TABLE 10-1

(continued)

File

Description

hosts.allow

Lists host computers that are allowed to use certain TCP/IP services from the local computer.

hosts.deny

Lists host computers that are not allowed to use certain TCP/IP services from the local computer (although this file will be used if you create it, it doesn’t exist by default).

inittab

Contains information that defines which programs start and stop when Linux boots, shuts down, or goes into different states in between. This is the most basic configuration file for starting Linux.

lilo.conf

Sets Linux boot loader (lilo) parameters to boot the computer. In particular, it lists information about bootable partitions on your computer. (If your distribution uses the GRUB boot loader, you may not see this file.)

modules.conf

Contains aliases and options related to loadable kernel modules used by your computer.

mtab

Contains a list of file systems that are currently mounted.

mtools.conf

Contains settings used by DOS tools in Linux.

named.conf

Contains DNS settings if you are running your own DNS server.

ntp.conf

Includes information needed to run the Network Time Protocol (NTP).

passwd

Stores account information for all valid users for the system. Also includes other information, such as the home directory and default shell. (Rarely includes the user passwords themselves, which are typically stored in the /etc/shadow file.)

printcap

Contains definitions for the printers configured for your computer. (If the printcap file doesn’t exist, look for printer information in the /etc/cups directory.)

profile

Sets system-wide environment and startup programs for all users. This file is read when the user logs in.

protocols

Sets protocol numbers and names for a variety of Internet services.

resolv.conf

Identifies the locations of DNS name server computers that are used by TCP/ IP to translate Internet host.domain names into IP addresses. (When a Web browser or mail client looks for an Internet site, it checks servers listed in this file to locate the site.)

rpc

Defines remote procedure call names and numbers.

services

Defines TCP/IP and UDP services and their port assignments.

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File

Description

shadow

Contains encrypted passwords for users who are defined in the passwd file. (This is viewed as a more secure way to store passwords than the original encrypted password in the passwd file. The passwd file needs to be publicly readable, whereas the shadow file can be unreadable by all but the root user.)

shells

Lists the shell command-line interpreters (bash, sh, csh, and so on) that are available on the system, as well as their locations.

sudoers

Sets commands that can be run by users, who may not otherwise have permission to run the command, using the sudo command. In particular, this file is used to provide selected users with root permission.

syslog.conf

Defines what logging messages are gathered by the syslogd daemon and what files they are stored, in. (Typically, log messages are stored in files contained in the /var/log directory.)

termcap

Lists definitions for character terminals, so that character-based applications know what features are supported by a given terminal. Graphical terminals and applications have made this file obsolete to most people. (Termcap was the BSD UNIX way of storing terminal information; UNIX System V used definitions in /usr/share/terminfo files.)

xinetd.conf

Contains simple configuration information used by the xinetd daemon process. This file mostly points to the /etc/xinetd.d directory for information about individual services. (Some systems use the inetd.conf file and the inetd daemon instead.)

10

Another directory, /etc/X11, includes subdirectories that each contain system-wide configuration files used by X and different X window managers available for Linux. The xorg.conf file (which makes your computer and monitor usable with X) and configuration directories containing files used by xdm and xinit to start X are in here. Directories relating to window managers contain files that include the default values that a user will get if that user starts one of these window managers on your system. Window managers that may have system-wide configuration files in these directories include Twm (twm/) and Xfce (xdg/).

NOTE

Some files and directories in /etc/X11 are linked to locations in the /usr/X11R6 directory.

Administrative Log Files One of the things that Linux does well is keep track of itself. This is a good thing, when you consider how much is going on in a complex operating system. Sometimes you are trying to get a new facility to work and it fails without giving you the foggiest reason why. Other times you want to monitor your system to see if people are trying to access your computer illegally. In any of those cases, you can use log files to help track down the problem.

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The main utilities for logging error and debugging messages for Linux are the syslogd and klogd daemons. General system logging is done by syslogd. Logging that is specific to kernel activity is done by klogd. Logging is done according to information in the /etc/syslog.conf file. Messages are typically directed to log files that are usually in the /var/log directory. Here are a few common log files: ■

boot.log — Contains boot messages about services as they start up.

■

messages — Contains many general informational messages about the system.

■

secure — Contains security-related messages, such as login activity.

■

XFree86.0.log or Xorg.0.log — Depending on which X server you are using, contains messages about your video card, mouse, and monitor configuration.

If you are using a Fedora Linux system, the System Log Viewer utility is a good way to step through your system’s log files. From the Applications menu, select System Tools ➪ System Log. You not only can view boot, kernel, mail, security, and other system logs, but you can also use the viewing pane to select log messages from a particular date.

Using sudo and Other Administrative Logins You don’t hear much about other administrative logins (besides root) being used with Linux. It was a fairly common practice in UNIX systems to have several different administrative logins that allowed administrative tasks to be split among several users. For example, people sitting near a printer could have lp permissions to move print jobs to another printer if they knew a printer wasn’t working. In any case, administrative logins are available with Linux, so you may want to look into using them. Here are some examples: ■

lp — User can control some printing features. Having a separate lp administrator allows someone other than the superuser to do such things as move or remove lp logs and print spool files. The home directory for lp is /var/spool/lpd.

■

mail — User can work with administrative e-mail features. The mail group, for many Linux systems, has group permissions to use mail files in /var/spool/mail (which is also often the mail user’s home directory).

■

uucp — User owns various uucp commands (once used as the primary method for dial-up serial communications) as well as log files in /var/log/uucp, spool files in /var/spool, administrative commands (such as uuchk, uucico, uuconv, and uuxqt) in /usr/sbin, and user commands (uucp, cu, uuname, uustat, and uux) in /usr/bin. The home directory for uucp is /var/spool/uucp.

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■

bin — User owns many commands in /bin in traditional UNIX systems. This is not the case in some Linux systems (such as Fedora and Gentoo) because root owns most executable files. The home directory of bin is /bin.

■

news — User could do administration of Internet news services, depending on how you set permission for /var/spool/news and other news-related resources. The home directory for news is /etc/news.

10

By default, the administrative logins in the preceding list are disabled. You would need to change the default shell from its current setting (usually /sbin/nologin or /bin/false) to a real shell (typically /bin/bash) to be able to log in as these users. One way to give full or limited root privileges to any nonroot user is to set up the sudo facility, which simply entails adding the user to /etc/sudoers and defining what privilege you want that user to have. Then the user can run any command he or she is privileged to use by preceding that command with the sudo command. Here’s an example of how to use the sudo facility to cause any users that are added to the wheel group to have full root privileges. 1. As the root user, edit the /etc/sudoers file by running the visudo command: # /usr/sbin/visudo

By default, the file opens in vi, unless your EDITOR variable happens to be set to some other editor acceptable to visudo (for example, export EDITOR=gedit). The reason for using visudo is that the command locks the /etc/sudoers file and does some basic sanity checking of the file to ensure it has been edited correctly.

NOTE

If you are stuck here, refer to the vi tutorial in Chapter 9 for information on using the vi editor.

2. Uncomment the following line to allow users in the wheel group to have full root privileges on the computer: %wheel

TIP

ALL=(ALL)

ALL

If you look at the sudoers file in Ubuntu, you will see that this privilege exists, by default, for the admin group members.

This line causes users in the wheel group to provide a password (their own password, not the root password) in order to use administrative commands. To allow users in the wheel group to have that privilege without using a password, uncomment the following line instead: %wheel

ALL=(ALL)

NOPASSWD: ALL

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3. Save the changes to the /etc/sudoers file (in vi, type Esc, and then ZZ). 4. Still as root user, open the /etc/group file using the vigr command and add to the wheel line any users you want to have root privilege. For example, if you were to add the users mary and jake to the wheel group, the line would appear as follows: wheel:x:10:root,mary,jake

Now users mary and jake can run the sudo command to run commands, or parts of commands, that are normally restricted to the root user. The following is an example of a session by the user jake after he has been assigned sudo privileges: [jake]$ sudo umount /mnt/win We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System Administrator. It usually boils down to these two things: #1) Respect the privacy of others. #2) Think before you type. Password: ********* [jake]$ umount /mnt/win mount: only root can mount /dev/sda1 on /mnt/win [jake]$ sudo umount /mnt/win [jake]$

In this session, the user jake runs the sudo command to unmount the /mnt/win file system (using the umount command). He is given a warning and asked to provide his password (this is jake’s password, not the root password). Even after jake has given the password, he must still use the sudo command to run subsequent administrative commands as root (the umount fails, but the sudo umount succeeds). Notice that he is not prompted for a password for the second sudo. That’s because after entering his password successfully, he can enter as many sudo commands as he wants for the next 5 minutes without having to enter it again. (You can change the timeout value from 5 minutes to however long you want by setting the passwd_timeout value in the /etc/sudoers file.) The preceding example grants a simple all-or-nothing administrative privilege to everyone you put in the wheel group. However, the /etc/sudoers file gives you an incredible amount of flexibility in permitting individual users and groups to use individual applications or groups of applications. Refer to the sudoers and sudo man pages for information about how to tune your sudo facility. Refer to the pam_wheel man page to see how the PAM facility affects members of the wheel group.

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Administering Your Linux System Your system administrator duties don’t end after you have installed Linux. If multiple people are using your Linux system, you, as administrator, must give each person his own login account. You’ll use useradd and related commands to add, modify, and delete user accounts. Configuring hardware is also on your duty list. When you add hardware to your Linux computer, that hardware is often detected and configured automatically. In some cases, however, the hardware may not have been set up properly, and you will use commands such as lsmod, modprobe, insmod, and rmmod to configure the right modules to get the hardware working. A device driver is the code permanently built into the kernel to allow application programs to talk to a particular piece of hardware. A module is like a driver, but it is loaded on demand. The “Configuring Hardware” section later in this chapter includes information about using these commands to configure modules.

NOTE

Managing file systems and disk space is your responsibility, too. You must keep track of the disk space being consumed, especially if your Linux system is shared by multiple users. At some point, you may need to add a hard disk or track down what is eating up your disk space (you use commands such as find to do this). Your duties also include monitoring system performance. You may have a runaway process on your system, or you may just be experiencing slow performance. Tools that come with Linux can help you determine how much of your CPU and memory are being consumed. These tasks are explored in the rest of this chapter.

Creating User Accounts Every person who uses your Linux system should have a separate user account. Having a user account provides each person with an area in which to securely store files, as well as a means of tailoring his or her user interface (GUI, path, environment variables, and so on) to suit the way that he or she uses the computer. You can add user accounts to most Linux systems in several ways — Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems use the system-config-users utility, for example, and SUSE offers a user setup module in YaST. This chapter describes how to add user accounts from the command line with useradd because most Linux systems include that command. (In some cases a Linux system will have a similar command called adduser.)

Adding Users with useradd The most straightforward method for creating a new user from the shell is with the useradd command. After opening a Terminal window with root permission, you simply invoke useradd at the command prompt, with details of the new account as parameters.

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The only required parameter is the login name of the user, but you probably want to include some additional information ahead of it. Each item of account information is preceded by a single letter option code with a dash in front of it. Table 10-2 lists the options available with useradd.

TABLE 10-2

useradd Command Options Option

Description

-c comment -c “comment here”

Provide a description of the new user account. Often the person’s full name. Replace comment with the name of the user account (-c jake). Use quotes to enter multiple words (-c “jake jackson”).

-d home_dir

Set the home directory to use for the account. The default is to name it the same as the login name and to place it in /home. Replace home_dir with the directory name to use (for example, -d /mnt/homes/jake).

-D

Rather than create a new account, save the supplied information as the new default settings for any new accounts that are created.

-e expire_date

Assign the expiration date for the account in MM/DD/YYYY format. Replace expire_date with a date you want to use (-e 05/06/2010).

-f -1

Set the number of days after a password expires until the account is permanently disabled. The default, -1, disables the option. Setting this to 0 disables the account immediately after the password has expired. Replace -1 with the number to use.

-g group

Set the primary group (as listed in the /etc/group file) the new user will be in. Replace group with the group name (-g wheel).

-G grouplist

Add the new user to the supplied comma-separated list of groups (-G wheel,sales,tech,lunch).

-k skel_dir

Set the skeleton directory containing initial configuration files and login scripts that should be copied to a new user’s home directory. This parameter can be used only in conjunction with the -m option. Replace skel_dir with the directory name to use. (Without this option, the /etc/skel directory is used.)

-m

Automatically create the user’s home directory and copy the files in the skeleton directory (/etc/skel) to it.

-M

Do not create the new user’s home directory, even if the default behavior is set to create it.

-n

Turn off the default behavior of creating a new group that matches the name and user ID of the new user. This option is available with Red Hat Linux systems. Other Linux systems often assign a new user to the group named users instead.

-o

Use with -u uid to create a user account that has the same UID as another username. (This effectively lets you have two different usernames with authority over the same set of files and directories.)

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Option

Description

-p passwd

Enter a password for the account you are adding. This must be an encrypted password. Instead of adding an encrypted password here, you can simply use the passwd user command later to add a password for user.

-s shell

Specify the command shell to use for this account. Replace shell with the command shell (-s bash).

-u user_id

Specify the user ID number for the account (-u 474). Without the -u option, the default behavior is to automatically assign the next available number. Replace user_id with the ID number (-u).

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For example, let’s create an account for a new user named Mary Smith with a login name of mary. First, log in as root, and then type the following command: # useradd -c “Mary Smith” mary When you choose a username, don’t begin with a number (for example, 26jsmith). Also, it’s best to use all lowercase letters, no control characters or spaces, and a maximum of 8 characters. The useradd command allows up to 32 characters, but some applications can’t deal with usernames that long. Tools such as ps display UIDs instead of names if names are too long. Having users named Jsmith and jsmith can cause confusion with programs (such as sendmail) that don’t distinguish case.

TIP

Next, set Mary’s initial password using the passwd command. You’re prompted to type the password twice: # passwd mary Changing password for user mary. New password: ******* Retype new password: *******

Asterisks in this example represent the password you type. Nothing is actually displayed when you type the password. Also keep in mind that running passwd as root user lets you add short or blank passwords that regular users cannot add themselves. In creating the account for Mary, the useradd command performs several actions: ■

Reads the /etc/login.defs file to get default values to use when creating accounts.

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Checks command-line parameters to find out which default values to override.

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Creates a new user entry in the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files based on the default values and command-line parameters.

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Creates any new group entries in the /etc/group file. (Fedora creates a group using the new user’s name; Gentoo adds the user to the users group; and SUSE adds it to every group you set for new users, such as dialout, audio, video, and other services.)

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Creates a home directory, based on the user’s name, in the /home directory.

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Copies any files located within the /etc/skel directory to the new home directory. This usually includes login and application startup scripts.

The preceding example uses only a few of the available useradd options. Most account settings are assigned using default values. You can set more values explicitly, if you want to; here’s an example that uses a few more options to do so: # useradd -g users -G wheel,apache -s /bin/tcsh -c “Mary Smith” mary

In this case, useradd is told to make users the primary group mary belongs to (-g), add her to the wheel and apache groups, and assign tcsh as her primary command shell (-s). A home directory in /home under the user’s name (/home/mary) is created by default. This command line results in a line similar to the following being added to the /etc/passwd file: mary:x:502:100:Mary Smith:/home/mary:/bin/tcsh

Each line in the /etc/passwd file represents a single user account record. Each field is separated from the next by a colon (:) character. The field’s position in the sequence determines what it is. As you can see, the login name is first. Again, the password field contains an x because we are using a shadow password file to store encrypted password data. The user ID selected by useradd is 502. The primary group ID is 100, which corresponds to the users group in the /etc/group file. The comment field was correctly set to Mary Smith, the home directory was automatically assigned as /home/mary, and the command shell was assigned as /bin/tcsh, exactly as specified with the useradd options. By leaving out many of the options (as I did in the first useradd example), defaults are assigned in most cases. For example, by not using -g users or -G wheel,apache, in Fedora a group named mary would have been created and assigned to the new user. Other Linux systems assign users as the group name by default. Likewise, excluding -s /bin/tcsh causes /bin/bash to be assigned as the default shell. The /etc/group file holds information about the different groups on your Linux system and the users who belong to them. Groups are useful for enabling multiple users to share access to the same files while denying access to others. Peek at the /etc/group file, and you find something similar to this: bin:x:1:root,bin,daemon daemon:x:2:root,bin,daemon sys:x:3:root,bin,adm adm:x:4:root,adm,daemon tty:x:5: disk:x:6:root lp:x:7:daemon,lp mem:x:8: kmem:x:9: wheel:x:10:root,joe,mary

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apache:x:48:mary . . . nobody:x:99: users:x:100: chris:x:500 sheree:x:501

Each line in the group file contains the name of a group, the group ID number associated with it, and a list of users in that group. By default, each user is added to his or her own group, beginning with GID 500. Note that mary was added to the wheel and apache groups instead of having her own group. It is actually rather significant that mary was added to the wheel group. By doing this, you grant her the capability to use the sudo command to run commands as the root user (provided that sudo is configured as described earlier in this chapter).

Setting User Defaults The useradd command determines the default values for new accounts by reading the /etc/ login.defs file. You can modify those defaults by either editing that file manually with a standard text editor or by running the useradd command with the -D option. Although login.defs is different on different Linux systems, here is an example containing many of the settings you might find in a login.defs file: PASS_MAX_DAYS PASS_MIN_DAYS PASS_MIN_LEN PASS_WARN_AGE UID_MIN UID_MAX GID_MIN GID_MAX

99999 0 5 7 500 60000 500 60000

CREATE_HOME yes

All uncommented lines contain keyword/value pairs. For example, the keyword PASS_MIN_LEN is followed by some white space and the value 5. This tells useradd that the user password must be at least five characters. Other lines let you customize the valid range of automatically assigned user ID numbers or group ID numbers. (Fedora starts at UID 500; other Linuxes start with UID 100.) A comment section that explains that keyword’s purpose precedes each keyword (which I edited out here to save space). Altering a default value is as simple as editing the value associated with a keyword and then saving the file.

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If you want to view the defaults, type the useradd command with the -D option, as follows: # useradd -D GROUP=100 HOME=/home INACTIVE=-1 EXPIRE= SHELL=/bin/bash SKEL=/etc/skel

You can also use the -D option to change defaults. When run with this flag, useradd refrains from actually creating a new user account; instead, it saves any additionally supplied options as the new default values in /etc/login.defs. Not all useradd options can be used in conjunction with the -D option. You can use only the five options listed in Table 10-3.

TABLE 10-3

useradd Options for Changing User Defaults Options

Description

-b default_home

Set the default directory in which user home directories are created. Replace default_home with the directory name to use (-b garage). Usually this is /home.

-e default_expire_date

Set the default expiration date on which the user account is disabled. The default_expire_date value should be replaced with a date in the form MM/DD/YYYY (-e 10/15/2009).

-f default_inactive

Set the number of days after a password has expired before the account is disabled. Replace default_inactive with a number representing the number of days (-f 7).

-g default_group

Set the default group that new users will be placed in. Normally useradd creates a new group with the same name and ID number as the user. Replace default_group with the group name to use (-g bears).

-s default_shell

Set the default shell for new users. Normally this is /bin/bash. Replace default_shell with the full path to the shell that you want as the default for new users (-s /bin/ash).

To set any of the defaults, give the -D option first, and then add the defaults you want to set. For example, to set the default home directory location to /home/everyone and the default shell to /bin/tcsh, type the following: # useradd -D -b /home/everyone -s /bin/tcsh

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Besides setting up user defaults, an administrator can create default files that are copied to each user’s home directory for use. These files can include login scripts and shell configuration files (such as .bashrc). Other commands that are useful for working with user accounts include usermod (to modify settings for an existing account) and userdel (to delete an existing user account).

Modifying Users with usermod The usermod command provides a simple and straightforward method for changing account parameters. Many of the options available with it mirror those found in useradd. Table 10-4 lists the options that can be used with this command.

TABLE 10-4

usermod Options Option

Description

-c username

Change the description associated with the user account. Replace username with the name of the user account (-c jake). Use quotes to enter multiple words (-c “jake jackson”).

-d home_dir

Change the home directory to use for the account. The default is to name it the same as the login name and to place it in /home. Replace home_dir with the directory name to use (for example, -d /mnt/homes/jake).

-e expire_date

Assign a new expiration date for the account in MM/DD/YYYY format. Replace expire_date with a date you want to use (-e 05/06/2010).

-f -1

Change the number of days after a password expires until the account is permanently disabled. The default, -1, disables the option. Setting this to 0 disables the account immediately after the password has expired. Replace -1 with the number to use.

-g group

Change the primary group (as listed in the /etc/group file) the user will be in. Replace group with the group name (-g wheel).

-G grouplist

Add the user to the supplied comma-separated list of groups (-G wheel,sales,tech,lunch).

-l login_name

Change the login name of the account.

-m

Available only when –d is used, this causes the contents of the user’s home directory to be copied to the new directory.

-o

Use only with -u uid to remove the restriction that UIDs must be unique.

-s shell

Specify a different command shell to use for this account. Replace shell with the command shell (-s bash).

-u user_id

Change the user ID number for the account. Replace user_id with the ID number (-u 474).

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As an example, to change the shell to the csh shell for the user named chris, type the following as root user from a shell: # usermod -s /bin/csh chris

Deleting Users with userdel Just as usermod is used to modify user settings and useradd is used to create users, userdel is used to remove users. The following command will remove the user chris: # userdel chris

The only option available with this utility is –r, which is used to remove not only the user, but also their home directory: # userdel –r chris

Configuring Hardware In a perfect world, after installing and booting Linux, all of your hardware is detected and available for access. Although many Linux systems are rapidly moving closer to that world, there are times when you must take special steps to get your computer hardware working. Also, the growing use of removable USB and FireWire devices (CDs, DVDs, flash drives, digital cameras, and removable hard drives) has made it important for Linux to: ■

Efficiently manage hardware that comes and goes.

■

Look at the same piece of hardware in different ways (for example, be able to see a printer as a fax machine, scanner, and storage device, as well as a printer).

If you are using a Linux system that includes the 2.6 kernel (as the latest versions of most major Linux systems do), new kernel features have made it possible to change drastically the way hardware devices are detected and managed. Features in, or closely related to, the kernel include Udev (to dynamically name and create devices as hardware comes and goes), and Hotplug and HAL (to pass information about hardware changes to user space). If all this sounds a bit confusing, don’t worry. It’s actually designed to make your life as a Linux user much easier. The end result of features built on the 2.6 kernel is that device handling in Linux has become: ■

More automatic — For most common hardware, when a hardware device is connected or disconnected, it is automatically detected and identified. Interfaces to access the hardware are added, so it is accessible to Linux. Then the fact that the hardware is present (or

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removed) is passed to the user level, where applications listening for hardware changes are ready to mount the hardware and/or launch an application (such as an image viewer or music player). ■

More flexible — If you don’t like what happens automatically when a hardware item is connected or disconnected, you can change it. For example, features built into GNOME and KDE desktops let you choose what happens when a music CD or movie DVD is inserted, or when a digital camera is connected. If you prefer a different program be launched to handle it, you can easily make that change.

This section covers several issues relating to getting your hardware working properly in Linux. First, it describes how to configure Linux to deal with removable media. Then it tells how to use tools for manually loading and working with drivers for hardware that is not detected and loaded properly.

Managing Removable Hardware Linux systems such as SUSE, RHEL, Fedora, and others that support full KDE and GNOME desktop environments include simple graphical tools for configuring what happens when you attach popular removable devices to the computer. So, with a KDE or GNOME desktop running, you simply plug in a USB device or insert a CD or DVD, and a window may pop up to deal with that device. Although different desktop environments share many of the same underlying mechanisms (Udev and Hotplug) to detect and name removable hardware, they offer different tools for configuring how they are mounted or used. Udev (using the udevd daemon) creates and removes devices (/dev directory) as hardware is added and removed from the computer. The hardware abstraction layer (HAL) provides the overall platform for discovering and configuring hardware. Settings that are of interest to someone using a desktop Linux system, however, can be configured with easy-to-use desktop tools. The following sections describe how removable hardware and media are configured, using a GNOME desktop in Fedora or a KDE desktop in SUSE.

Removable Media on a GNOME Desktop The Nautilus file manager used with the GNOME desktop lets you define what happens when you attach removable devices or insert removable media into the computer from the File Management Preferences window. The descriptions in this section are based on GNOME 2.22. From a Nautilus file manager window, select Edit ➪ Preferences, and then select the Media tab to see how your system is configured to handle removable media. Figure 10-3 shows an example of that window.

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FIGURE 10-3 Change removable media settings in Nautilus.

The following settings are available from the Media tab on the File Management Preferences window. These settings relate to how removable media are handled when they are inserted or plugged in. In most cases, the default is to display a prompt that asks you how to handle a medium that is inserted or connected. ■

CD Audio — When an audio CD is inserted, you can choose to be prompted for what to do (default), do nothing, open the contents in a folder window, or select from various audio CD players to be launched to play the content. Rhythmbox music player and Sound Juicer CD ripper are among the choices you have for handling an inserted audio CD.

■

DVD Video — When a commercial video DVD is inserted, you are prompted for what to do with that DVD. You can change that default to launch Movie Player (Totem) or another media player you have installed (such as MPlayer).

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Music Player — When inserted media contains audio files, you are asked what to do. You can select to have Rhythmbox or some other music player begin playing the files by selecting that player from this box.

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Photos — When inserted media (such as a memory card from a digital camera) contains digital images, you are asked what to do with those images. You can select to do nothing, or you can select to have the images opened in the gThumb image viewer or F-Spot photo manager.

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Software — When inserted media contains an autorun application, an autorun prompt will open. To change that behavior (to do nothing or open the media contents in a folder), you can select that from this box.

■

Other Media — Select the Type box under the Other Media heading to select how less commonly used media are handled. For example, you can select what actions are taken to handle blank Blu-Ray discs, CDs, or DVDs. You can select what applications to launch for Blu-Ray video, DVD audio, HD DVD videos, picture CDs, super video CDs, and video CDs.

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Note that the settings described here are only in effect for the user that is currently logged in. If multiple users have login accounts, each can have his or her own way of handling removable media. The Totem movie player will not play movie DVDs unless you add extra software to decrypt the DVD. There are legal issues and other movie player options you should look into if you want to play commercial DVD movies from Linux. See Chapter 4 for more information about video players in Linux.

NOTE

■

Portable Music Players — A music player is started in Linux to play files from your portable iPod or other music player, if this is selected and you enter a player to use. The banshee project (http://banshee-project.org) includes software for playing music from iPods in Linux. (From Fedora, type yum install banshee to install the software from the Fedora repository. Then add ipod %d to this field to use the player.)

Removable Media on a SUSE KDE Desktop When you insert a removable medium (CD or DVD) or plug in a removable device (digital camera or USB flash drive) from a KDE desktop in SUSE, a window opens to let you choose the type of action to take on it. If you want to add a different action, or change an existing action, click the Configure button. Figure 10-4 shows an example of the window that appears when a 32MB USB flash drive is inserted, as well as the KDE Control Module that appears when Configure is selected.

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FIGURE 10-4 Use the KDE Control Module to set how to respond to inserted media.

Working with Loadable Modules If you have added hardware to your computer that isn’t properly detected, you might need to manually load a module for that hardware. Linux comes with a set of commands for loading, unloading and getting information about hardware modules. If you have installed the Linux kernel source code, source code files for available drivers are stored in subdirectories of the /usr/src/linux*/ drivers directory. You can find information about these drivers in a couple of ways: ■

make xconfig — With /usr/src/linux* as your current directory, type make xconfig from a Terminal window on the desktop. Select the category of module you want and then click Help next to the driver that interests you. The help information that appears includes a description of the driver. (If your system is missing graphical libraries needed to run make xconfig, try make menuconfig instead.)

■

Documentation — The /usr/src/linux*/Documentation directory contains lots of plain-text files describing different aspects of the kernel and related drivers.

After modules have been built, they are installed in the /lib/modules/ subdirectories. The name of the directory is based on the release number of the kernel that the modules were compiled for. Modules that are in that directory can then be loaded and unloaded as they are needed. Before building modules for a new kernel, or more important, a current kernel, it may be wise to add your initials to the kernel Makefile under the variable EXTRAVERSION at the top of the Makefile. This installs your new modules under /lib/modules/kernel-version with the EXTRAVERSION suffixed to the directory. If you completely wreck the module build, you haven’t overwritten the

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current modules you may be running. It also makes it easier to identify custom kernel modules when debugging.

Listing Loaded Modules To see which modules are currently loaded into the running kernel on your computer, use the lsmod command. Here’s an example: # lsmod Module Size Used by snd_seq_oss 38912 0 snd_seq_midi_event 9344 1 snd_seq_oss snd_seq 67728 4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq_device 8328 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq . . . autofs 16512 0 ne2k_pci 9056 0 8390 13568 1 ne2k_pci ohci1394 41860 0 ieee1394 284464 1 ohci1394 floppy 65712 0 sg 36120 0 scsi_mod 124600 1 sg parport_pc 39724 0 parport 47336 1 parport_pc ext3 128424 2 jbd 86040 1 ext3 If you don’t have a Linux system installed yet, try booting KNOPPIX and using lsmod to list your loaded modules. If all your hardware is working properly, write down the list of modules. Later, when you permanently install Fedora or some other Linux system, if your CD drive, modem, video card, or other hardware doesn’t work properly, you can use your list of modules to determine which module should have been used and load it, as described in the next section.

NOTE

This output shows a variety of modules that have been loaded on a Linux system, including several to support the ALSA sound system, some of which provide OSS compatibility (snd_seq_oss). To find information about any of the loaded modules, use the modinfo command. For example, you could type the following: # /sbin/modinfo -d snd-seq-oss “OSS-compatible sequencer module”

Not all modules have descriptions available and if nothing is available, no data will be returned. In this case, however, the snd-seq-oss module is described as an OSS-compatible sequencer module.

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You can also use the -a option to see the author of the module, or -n to see the object file representing the module. The author information often has the e-mail address of the driver’s creator, so you can contact the author if you have problems or questions about it.

Loading Modules You can load any module that has been compiled and installed (to the /lib/modules directory) into your running kernel using the modprobe command. A common reason for loading a module is to use a feature temporarily (such as loading a module to support a special file system on a floppy you want to access). Another reason is to identify a module that will be used by a particular piece of hardware that could not be autodetected. Here is an example of the modprobe command being used to load the parport module, which provides the core functions to share parallel ports with multiple devices: # modprobe parport

After parport is loaded, you can load the parport_pc module to define the PC-style ports available through the interface. The parport_pc module lets you optionally define the addresses and IRQ numbers associated with each device sharing the parallel port. For example: # modprobe parport_pc io=0x3bc irq=auto

In this example, a device is identified as having an address of 0x3bc, and the IRQ for the device is autodetected. The modprobe command loads modules temporarily — they disappear at the next reboot. To permanently add the module to your system, add the modprobe command line to one of the startup scripts run at boot time. You can also add modules to the /etc/modules file to have them loaded at startup. An alternative to modprobe is the insmod command. The advantage of using modprobe, however, is that insmod loads only the module you request, whereas modprobe tries to load other modules that the one you requested is dependent on.

NOTE

Removing Modules Use the rmmod command to remove a module from a running kernel. For example, to remove the module parport_pc from the current kernel, type the following: # rmmod parport_pc

If it is not currently busy, the parport_pc module is removed from the running kernel. If it is busy, try killing any process that might be using the device. Then run rmmod again. Sometimes, the module you are trying to remove depends on other modules that may be loaded. For instance, the usbcore module cannot be unloaded while the USB printer module (usblp) is loaded, as shown here: # rmmod usbcore ERROR: Module usbcore is in use by wacom,usblp,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd

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Managing File Systems and Disk Space File systems in Linux are organized in a hierarchy, beginning from root (/) and continuing downward in a structure of directories and subdirectories. As an administrator of a Linux system, it’s your duty to make sure that all the disk drives that represent your file system are available to the users of the computer. It is also your job to make sure there is enough disk space in the right places in the file system for users to store what they need. File systems are organized differently in Linux than they are in Microsoft Windows operating systems. Instead of drive letters (for example, A:, B:, C:) for each local disk, network file system, CD-ROM, or other type of storage medium, everything fits neatly into the directory structure.

COMING FROM

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Some drives are connected (mounted) automatically into the file system. For example, a CD might be mounted on /media/cdrom. If the drive isn’t mounted automatically, it is up to an administrator to create a mount point in the file system and then connect the disk to that point.

The organization of your file system begins when you install Linux. Part of the installation process is to divide your hard disk (or disks) into partitions. Those partitions can then be assigned to: ■

A part of the Linux file system

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Swap space for Linux

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Other file system types (perhaps containing other bootable operating systems)

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Free space (you can leave space unassigned so you can format it later as you need it)

This chapter focuses on partitions that are used for the Linux file system. To see what partitions are currently set up on partitions that the Linux kernel has detected, use the fdisk command: # /sbin/fdisk –l Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4825 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes = 8225280 bytes Device Boot /dev/sda1 * /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sda4 /dev/sda5

Start 1 84 90 523 523

End 13 89 522 554 554

Blocks 104 48195 3478072+ 257040 257008+

Id b 83 83 5 82

System Win95 FAT32 Linux Linux Extended Linux swap

This output shows the disk partitioning for a computer capable of running both Linux and Microsoft Windows. You can see that the Linux partition on /dev/sda3 has most of the space available for data. There is a Windows partition (/dev/sda1) and a Linux swap partition (/dev/sda5). There is also a small /boot partition (46MB) on /dev/sda2. In this case, the root partition for Linux has 3.3GB of disk space and resides on /dev/sda3. The fdisk –l command uses partition information found in /proc/partitions unless explicitly given on the command line.

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Next use the mount command (with no options) to see what partitions are actually being used for your Linux system (which available disk partitions are actually mounted and where they are mounted): # mount /dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw) /dev/sda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw) /dev/sda1 on /mnt/win type vfat (rw) /dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw) /dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw) /dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) /dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw) /dev/cdrom on /media/cdrecorder type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev)

Although some of the file systems shown as mounted are for special purposes (/sys, /proc, and others), our concern here is with disk partition (/dev/hd*, /dev/sd*, and so on). The mounted Linux partitions in this case are /dev/sda2, which provides space for the /boot directory (contains data for booting Linux), and /dev/sda3, which provides space for the rest of the Linux file system beginning from the root directory (/). This particular system also contains a Windows partition that was mounted in the /mnt/win directory and a CD that was mounted in /media/cdrecorder. (With most GUI interfaces, the CD is typically mounted automatically when you insert it. For 2.6 kernels, look in the /media directory; for 2.4 kernels the /mnt directory is often used.) After the word type, you can see the type of file system contained on the device. (See the description of different file system types in Table 10-5 in the following section.) Particularly on larger Linux systems, you may have multiple partitions for several reasons: ■

Multiple hard disks — You may have several hard disks available to your users. In that case you would have to mount each disk (and possibly several partitions from each disk) in different locations in your file system.

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Protecting different parts of the file system — If the users on a system consume all of the file system space, the entire system can fail. For example, there may be no place for temporary files to be copied (so the programs writing to temporary files fail), and incoming mail may fail to be written to mail boxes. With multiple mounted partitions, if one partition runs out of space, the others can continue to work.

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Multiple operating systems — You can configure your disk to contain multiple partitions that can each be used to hold a different operating system type. For example, if you started with a computer that had Windows on the hard disk, you could put Linux on a separate partition, and then set up the computer to boot either operating system.

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Backups — Some fast ways exist to back up data from your computer that involve copying the entire image of a disk or partition. If you want to restore that partition later, you can

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simply copy it back (bit by bit) to a hard disk. With smaller partitions, this approach can be done fairly efficiently. ■

Protecting from disk failure — If one disk (or part of one disk) fails, having multiple partitions mounted on your file system may let you continue working and just fix the one disk that fails. Ghost for Linux (http://freshmeat.net/projects/g4l) is an example of a tool for backing up a hard disk partition in Linux.

When a disk partition is mounted on the Linux file system, all directories and subdirectories below that mount point are stored on that partition. So, for example, if you were to mount one partition on / and one on /usr, everything below the /usr mount point would be stored on the second partition, while everything else would be stored on the first partition. If you then mounted another partition on /usr/local, everything below that mount point would be on the third partition, while everything else below /usr would be on the second partition. What happens if a remote file system is unmounted from your computer, and you go to save a file in that mount point directory? You will write the file to that directory, and it will be stored on your local hard disk. When the remote file system is remounted, however, the file you saved will seem to disappear. To get the file back, you’ll have to unmount the remote file system (causing the file to reappear), move the file to another location, remount the file system, and copy the file back there.

TIP

Mount points often mentioned as being candidates for separate partitions include /, /boot, /home, /usr, and /var. The root file system (/) is the catchall for directories that aren’t in other mount points. The root file system’s mount point (/) is the only one that is required. The /boot directory holds the images needed to boot the operating system. The /home file system is where all the user accounts are typically stored. Applications and documentation are stored in /usr. Below the /var mount point is where log files, temporary files, server files (Web, FTP, and so on), and lock files are stored (that is, items that need disk space for your computer’s applications to keep running). The fact that multiple partitions are mounted on your file system is invisible to people using your Linux system. It is an issue only when a partition runs out of space or if users need to save or use information from a particular device (such as a floppy disk or remote file system) that isn’t mounted. Of course, any user can check this by typing the mount command.

Mounting File Systems Most of your hard disks are mounted automatically for you. When you install Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, or some other Linux systems, you are asked to create partitions and indicate the mount points for those partitions. (Other Linux installation procedures will expect you to know that you have to partition before beginning.) When you boot Linux, all Linux partitions residing on hard disk that are listed in your /etc/fstab file are typically mounted. For that reason, this section focuses mostly on how to mount other types of devices so that they become part of your Linux file system. The mount command is used not only to mount devices, but also to mount other kinds of file systems on your Linux system. This means that you can store files from other operating systems or use

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file systems that are appropriate for certain kinds of activities (such as writing large block sizes). The most common use of this feature for the average Linux user, however, is to enable that user to obtain and work with files from floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or other removable media. With the addition of automatic mounting features and changes in how removable media are identified with the Linux 2.6 kernel (see descriptions of Udev and HAL earlier in this chapter), you no longer need to manually mount removable media for many Linux desktop systems. Understanding how to manually mount and unmount file systems on a Linux server, however, can be a very useful skill.

NOTE

Supported File Systems To see file system types that are currently available to be used on your system, type cat /proc/ filesystems. Table 10-5 shows the file system types that are supported in Linux, although they may not be in use at the moment, or they may not be built into your current kernel (so they may need to be loaded as modules).

TABLE 10-5

Supported File System Types Type

Description

adfs

Acorn disk file system, which is the standard file system used on RiscOS operating systems.

befs

File system used by the BeOS operating system.

cifs

Common Internet File System (CIFS), the virtual file system used to access servers that comply with the SNIA CIFS specification. CIFS is an attempt to refine and standardize the SMB protocol used by Samba and Windows file sharing.

ext3

Ext file systems are the most common in Red Hat and many other Linux systems. The ext3 file system, also called the Third Extended file system, includes journaling features that, compared to ext2, improve a file system’s capability to recover from crashes.

ext2

The default file system type for earlier Linux systems. Features are the same as ext3, except that ext2 doesn’t include journaling features.

ext

This is the first version of ext3. It is not used very often anymore.

iso9660

Evolved from the High Sierra file system (the original standard for CD-ROMs). Extensions to the High Sierra standard (called Rock Ridge extensions) allow iso9660 file systems to support long filenames and UNIX-style information (such as file permissions, ownership, and links). Data CD-ROMs typically use this file system type.

kafs

AFS client file system. Used in distributed computing environments to share files with Linux, Windows, and Macintosh clients.

minix

Minix file system type, used originally with the Minix version of UNIX. It supports filenames of up to only 30 characters.

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Type

Description

msdos

An MS-DOS file system. You can use this type to mount floppy disks that come from Microsoft operating systems.

vfat

Microsoft extended FAT (VFAT) file system.

umsdos

An MS-DOS file system with extensions to allow features that are similar to UNIX (including long filenames).

proc

Not a real file system, but rather a file system interface to the Linux kernel. You probably won’t do anything special to set up a proc file system. However, the /proc mount point should be a proc file system. Many utilities rely on /proc to gain access to Linux kernel information.

reiserfs

ReiserFS journaled file system. ReiserFS and ext3 are the most common file system types used with Linux today.

swap

Used for swap partitions. Swap areas are used to hold data temporarily when RAM is currently used up. Data is swapped to the swap area and then returned to RAM when it is needed again.

squashfs

Compressed, read-only file system type. Squashfs is popular on live CDs, where there is limited space and a read-only medium (such as a CD or DVD).

nfs

Network File System (NFS) used to mount file systems on other Linux or UNIX computers.

hpfs

File system used to do read-only mounts of an OS/2 HPFS file system.

ncpfs

This relates to Novell NetWare file systems. NetWare file systems can be mounted over a network.

ntfs

Windows NT file system. Depending upon the distribution you have, it may be supported as a read-only file system (so that you can mount and copy files from it).

affs

File system used with Amiga computers.

ufs

File system popular on Sun Microsystems operating systems (that is, Solaris and SunOS).

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If you want to use a file system type that is not currently shown as available on your system (when you type cat /proc/filesystems), try using modprobe to load the module for that file systems. For example, modprobe ufs adds the UFS file system type to the running kernel. Type man fs to see descriptions of Linux file systems.

Using the fstab File to Define Mountable File Systems The hard disk partitions on your local computer and the remote file systems you use every day are probably set up to automatically mount when you boot Linux. The /etc/fstab file contains

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definitions for each partition, along with options describing how the partition is mounted. Here’s an example of an /etc/fstab file: LABEL=/ LABEL=/boot /dev/devpts /dev/shm /dev/proc /dev/sys /dev/sda5 /dev/cdrom /dev/sda1 /dev/fd0

/ /boot /dev/pts /dev/shm /proc /sys swap /media/cdrecorder /mnt/win /mnt/floppy

ext3 ext3 devpts tmpfs proc sysfs swap udf,iso9660 vfat auto

defaults defaults gid=5,mode=620 defaults defaults defaults defaults exec,noauto,managed noauto noauto,owner

1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

All partitions listed in this file are mounted at boot time, except for those set to noauto in the fourth field. In this example, the root (/) and boot (/boot) hard disk partitions are mounted at boot time, along with the /dev/pts, /dev/shm, /dev/sys, /dev/shm, and /proc file systems (which are not associated with particular storage devices). The CD drive (/dev/cdrom) and floppy disk (/dev/fd0) drives are not mounted at boot time. Definitions are put in the fstab file for floppy and CD drives so that they can be mounted in the future (as described later). I also added one line for /dev/sda1, which enables me to mount the Windows (vfat) partition on my computer so I don’t have to always boot Windows to get at the files on my Windows partition. Most Windows systems today use the NTFS file system. Support for this system, however, is not delivered with every Linux system. NTFS support was added to the Fedora repository in Fedora 7 with the ntfs-3g package. Other NTFS support is available from the Linux-NTFS project (www.linux-ntfs.org/).

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If your computer is configured to dual boot Linux and Windows, you can mount your Windows file system to make it available in Linux. To access your Windows partition, you must first create the mount point (in this example, by typing mkdir /mnt/win). Then you can mount it when you choose by typing (as root) mount /mnt/win.

Different Linux distributions will set up their fstab file differently. Some don’t use labels and many others don’t use a separate /boot partition by default. They will just have a swap partition and have all user data under the root partition (/). Here is what’s in each field of the fstab file: ■

Field 1 — The name of the device representing the file system. This field can include the LABEL option, with which you can indicate a universally unique identifier (UUID) or vol-

ume label instead of a device name. The advantage to this approach is that because the partition is identified by volume name, you can move a volume to a different device name and not have to change the fstab file. ■

Field 2 — The mount point in the file system. The file system contains all data from the mount point down the directory tree structure unless another file system is mounted at some point beneath it.

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Field 3 — The file system type. Valid file system types are described in the “Supported File Systems” section earlier in this chapter.

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Field 4 — Options to the mount command. In the preceding example, the noauto option prevents the indicated file system from being mounted at boot time, and ro says to mount the file system read-only (which is reasonable for a CD drive). Commas must separate options. See the mount command manual page (under the -o option) for information on other supported options.

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Normally, only the root user is allowed to mount a file system using the mount command. However, to allow any user to mount a file system (such as a file system on a floppy disk), you could add the user option to Field 4 of /etc/fstab. In openSUSE, read/write permissions are given to specific devices (such as disk or audio devices) by specific groups (such as the disk or audio group) so that users assigned to those groups can mount or otherwise access those devices. In the YaST Control Center, choose Security and Users ➪ User Management ➪ Defaults for New Users. The Secondary Groups box indicates which of these additional groups each user is assigned to.

TIP

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Field 5 — The number in this field indicates whether the indicated file system needs to be dumped (that is, have its data backed up). A 1 means that the file system needs to be dumped, and a 2 means that it doesn’t. (This field is not used much anymore because many Linux systems no longer include the dump command. Most often, a 0 is used.)

■

Field 6 — The number in this field indicates whether the indicated file system needs to be checked with fsck. A 1 means it needs to be checked, and 2 means it doesn’t.

If you want to add an additional local disk or partition, you can create an entry for it in the /etc/ fstab file. See Chapter 16 for information on mounting Samba, NFS, and other remount file systems from /etc/fstab.

Using the mount Command to Mount File Systems Linux systems automatically run mount -a (mount all file systems) each time you boot. For that reason, you generally use the mount command only for special situations. In particular, the average user or administrator uses mount in two ways: ■

To display the disks, partitions, and remote file systems currently mounted

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To temporarily mount a file system

Any user can type mount (with no options) to see what file systems are currently mounted on the local Linux system. The following is an example of the mount command. It shows a single hard disk partition (/dev/sda1) containing the root (/) file system, and proc and devpts file system types mounted on /proc and /dev, respectively. The last entry shows a floppy disk, formatted with a standard Linux file system (ext3) mounted on the /mnt/floppy directory. $ mount /dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw) /dev/sda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw) /dev/sda1 on /mnt/win type vfat (rw)

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/dev/proc on /proc type proc (rw) /dev/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw) /dev/devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620) /dev/shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw) none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw) /dev/cdrom on /media/cdrecorder type iso9660 (ro,nosuid,nodev) /dev/fd0 on /mnt/floppy type ext3 (rw)

Traditionally, the most common devices to mount by hand are your floppy disk and your CD drive. However, depending on the type of desktop you are using, CDs and floppy disks may be mounted for you automatically when you insert them. (In some cases, the autorun program may also run automatically. For example, autorun may start a CD music player or software package installer to handle the data on the medium.)

Mounting Removable Media If you want to mount a file system manually, the /etc/fstab file helps make it simple to mount a floppy disk or a CD. In some cases, you can use the mount command with a single option to indicate what you want to mount, and information is taken from the /etc/fstab file to fill in the other options. There are probably already entries in your /etc/fstab file to let you do these quick mounts in the following two cases: ■

CD — If you are mounting a CD that is in the standard ISO 9960 format (as most software CD-ROMs are), you can mount that CD by placing it in your CD-ROM drive and typing one of the following: # mount /media/cd* # mount /mnt/cdrom

By default, a CD is usually mounted on the /mnt/cdrom directory (Linux 2.4 kernels) or a subdirectory of /media (Linux 2.6 kernels). (The file system type, device name, and other options are filled in automatically.) To see the contents, type cd /mnt/cdrom or cd /media/ cd*, and then type ls. Files from the CD’s root directory will be displayed. (With newer desktop features such as Udev and HAL, often CDs and DVDs are mounted automatically, so there is no need to manually run the mount command.) ■

Floppy disk — If you want to mount a floppy in the Linux ext3 file system format (ext3), or in some cases a format that can be autodetected, mount that floppy disk by inserting it in your floppy drive and typing one of the following: # mount /media/floppy* # mount /mnt/floppy

The file system type (ext3), device (/dev/fd0), and mount options are filled in from the /etc/fstab file. You should be able to change to the floppy disk directory (cd /mnt/ floppy or cd /media/floppy*) and list the contents of the floppy’s top directory (ls).

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NOTE

10

In both of the these cases, you could give the device name (which is something like /dev/cdrom or /dev/fd0) instead of the mount point directory to get the same results.

Of course, it is possible that you may get floppy disks you want to use that are in different formats. Someone may give you a floppy containing files from an older Microsoft operating system (in MS-DOS format). Or you may get a file from another UNIX system. In those cases, you can fill in your own options instead of relying on options from the /etc/fstab file. In some cases, Linux autodetects that the floppy disk contains an MS-DOS (or Windows vfat) file system and mounts it properly without additional arguments. If it doesn’t, here’s an example of how to mount a floppy containing MS-DOS files: # mkdir /mnt/floppy # mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

This shows the basic format of the mount command you would use to mount a floppy disk. You can change msdos to any other supported file system type (described earlier in this chapter) to mount a floppy of that type. Instead of using floppy drive A: (/dev/fd0), you could use drive B: (/dev/fd1) or any other accessible drive. Instead of mounting on /mnt/floppy, you could create any other directory and mount the floppy there. Here are some other useful options you could add to the mount command: ■

-t auto — If you aren’t sure exactly what type of file system is contained on the floppy

disk (or other medium you are mounting), use this option to indicate the file system type. The mount command will query the disk to try to ascertain what type of file system it contains. ■

-r — If you don’t want to make changes to the mounted file system (or can’t because it is a read-only medium), use this option to mount it read-only.

■

-w — This mounts the file system with read/write permission.

Mounting a Disk Image in Loopback Another valuable way to use the mount command has to do with disk images. If you download a CD or floppy disk image from the Internet and you want to see what it contains, you can do so without burning it to CD or floppy. With the image on your hard disk, create a mount point and use the -o loop option to mount it locally. Here’s an example: # mkdir /mnt/mycdimage # mount -o loop whatever-i386-disc1.iso /mnt/mycdimage

In this example, the /mnt/mycdimage directory is created, and then the disk image file (whatever-i386-disc1.iso) residing in the current directory is mounted on it. You can now cd to that directory, view the contents of it, and copy or use any of its contents. This is useful for downloaded CD images from which you want to install software without having to burn the image to CD. You could also share that mountpoint over NFS, so you could install the software from another computer. When you are done, just type umount /mnt/mycdimage to unmount it.

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Other options to mount are available only for specific file system types. See the mount manual page for those and other useful options.

Using the umount Command When you are done using a temporary file system, or you want to unmount a permanent file system temporarily, use the umount command. This command detaches the file system from its mount point in your Linux file system. To use umount, you can give it either a directory name or a device name. For example: # umount /mnt/floppy

This unmounts the device (probably /dev/fd0) from the mount point /mnt/floppy. You can also unmount using the form # umount /dev/fd0

In general, it’s better to use the directory name (/mnt/floppy) because the umount command will fail if the device is mounted in more than one location. (Device names all begin with /dev.) If you get the message device is busy, the umount request has failed because either a process has a file open on the device or you have a shell open with a directory on the device as a current directory. Stop the processes or change to a directory outside the device you are trying to unmount for the umount request to succeed. An alternative for unmounting a busy device is the -l option. With umount -l (a lazy unmount), the unmount happens as soon as the device is no longer busy. To unmount a remote NFS file system that’s no longer available (for example, the server went down), you can use the umount -f option to forcibly unmount the NFS file system. A really useful tool for discovering what’s holding open a device you want to unmount is the lsof command. Type lsof with the name of the partition you want to unmount (such as lsof /mnt/floppy). The output shows you what commands are holding files open on that partition.

TIP

Using the mkfs Command to Create a File System You can create a file system for any supported file system type on a disk or partition that you choose. You do so with the mkfs command. While this is most useful for creating file systems on hard-disk partitions, you can create file systems on floppy disks or rewritable CDs as well. Here is an example of using mkfs to create a file system on a floppy disk: # mkfs -t ext3 /dev/fd0 mke2fs 1.40.4, (29-May-2008) Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=1024 (log=0)

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Fragment size=1024 (log=0) 184 inodes, 1440 blocks 72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user First data block=1 1 block group 8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group 184 inodes per group Writing inode tables: done Filesystem too small for a journal Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done The filesystem will be automatically checked every 32 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

You can see the statistics that are output with the formatting done by the mkfs command. The number of inodes and blocks created are output, as are the number of blocks per group and fragments per group. You could now mount this file system (mount /mnt/floppy), change to it as your current directory (cd /mnt/floppy), and create files on it as you please.

Adding a Hard Disk Adding a new hard disk to your computer so that it can be used by Linux requires a combination of steps described in previous sections. Here’s the general procedure: 1. Install the new hard disk hardware. 2. Identify the partitions on the new disk. 3. Create the file systems on the new disk. 4. Mount the file systems.

The easiest way to add a hard disk to Linux is to have the entire disk devoted to a single Linux partition. You can have multiple partitions, however, and assign them each to different types of file systems and different mount points, if you like. The following process takes you through adding a hard disk containing a single Linux partition. Along the way, it also notes which steps you need to repeat to have multiple file systems with multiple mount points. This procedure assumes that Linux is already installed and working on the computer. If this is not the case, follow the instructions for adding a hard disk on your current operating system. Later, when you install Linux, you can identify this disk when you are asked to partition your hard disk(s).

NOTE

1. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions for physically installing and connecting the new hard disk in your computer. If, presumably, this is a second hard disk, you may need to

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change jumpers on the hard disk unit itself to have it operate as a slave hard disk (if it’s on the same cable as your first hard disk). You may also need to change the BIOS settings. 2. Boot your computer to Linux. 3. Determine the device name for the hard disk. As root user from a shell, type: # dmesg | less

4. From the output, look for an indication that the new disk was found. For example, if it’s a second IDE hard disk, you should see hdb: in the output. For a second SCSI drive, you should see sdb: instead. (The hd? and sd? drive letters are incremented as they are found by the kernel.) Be sure you identify the correct disk, or you will erase all the data from disks you probably want to keep! 5. Use the fdisk command to create partitions on the new disk. For example, if you are formatting the second IDE disk (hdb), you can type the following: # fdisk /dev/hdb

Now you are in fdisk command mode, where you can use the fdisk single-letter command set to work with your partitions. If the disk had existing partitions on it, you can change or delete those partitions now. Or, you can simply reformat the whole disk to blow everything away. Use p to view all partitions and d to delete a partition. 6. To create a new partition, type the following: n

7. Choose an extended (e) or (p) primary partition. To choose a primary partition, type the following: p

8. Type in the partition number. If you are creating the first partition (or for only one partition), type the number one: 1

Enter the first cylinder number (1 is the default). A range of cylinder numbers is displayed (for example, 1–4865 is the number of cylinders that appears for my 40GB hard drive). 9. To assign the new partition to begin at the first cylinder on the new hard disk, type the number 1.

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10. Enter the last cylinder number. If you are using the entire hard disk, use the last cylinder number shown. Otherwise, choose the ending cylinder number or indicate how many megabytes the partition should have. 11. To create more partitions on the hard disk, repeat Steps 6 through 10 for each partition (possibly changing the file system types as needed). 12. Type w to write changes to the hard disk and exit from the fdisk command. At this point, you should be back at the shell. 13. To create a file system on the new disk partition, use the mkfs command. By default, this command creates an ext2 file system, which is usable by Linux. However, in most cases you will want to use a journaling file system (such as ext3 or reiserfs). To create an ext3 file system on the first partition of the second hard disk, type the following: # mkfs -t ext3 /dev/hdb1

If you created multiple partitions, repeat this step for each partition (such as /dev/hdb2, /dev/hdb3, and so on). If you don’t use -t ext3, an ext2 file system is created by default. Use other commands, or options to this command, to create other file system types. For example, use mkfs. vfat to create a VFAT file system, mkfs.msdos for DOS, or mkfs.reiserfs for a Reiser file system type. The tune2fs command, described later in this section, can be used to change an ext2 file system to an ext3 file system.

TIP

14. After the file system is created, you can have the partition permanently mounted by editing /etc/fstab and adding the new partition. Here is an example of a line you might add to that file: /dev/hdb1

/abc

ext3

defaults

1 1

In this example, the partition (/dev/hdb1) is mounted on the /abc directory as an ext3 file system. The defaults keyword causes the partition to be mounted at boot time. The numbers 1 1 cause the disk to be checked for errors. Add one line like this example for each partition you created. 15. Create the mount point. For example, to mount the partition on /abc (as shown in the previous step), type the following: # mkdir /abc

16. Create your other mount points if you created multiple partitions. The next time you boot Linux, the new partition(s) will be automatically mounted on the /abc directory.

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After you have created the file systems on your partitions, a nice tool for adjusting those file systems is the tune2fs command. You can use it to change volume labels, how often the file system is checked, and error behavior. You can also use it to change an ext2 file system to an ext3 file system so the file system can use journaling. For example: # tune2fs -j /dev/hdb1 tune2fs 1.40.4 (29-May-2008) Creating journal inode: done This filesystem will be automatically checked every 38 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

By adding the -j option to tune2fs, you can either change the journal size or attach the file system to an external journal block device (essentially turning a nonjournaling ext2 file system into a journaling ext3 file system). After you use tune2fs to change your file system type, you probably need to correct your /etc/fstab file to include the file type change (from ext2 to ext3).

Checking System Space Running out of disk space on your computer is not a happy situation. You can use tools that come with Linux to keep track of how much disk space has been used on your computer, and you can keep an eye on users who consume a lot of disk space.

Displaying System Space with df You can display the space available in your file systems using the df command. To see the amount of space available on all the mounted file systems on your Linux computer, type df with no options: $ df Filesystem /dev/sda3 /dev/sda2 /dev/fd0

1k-blocks 30645460 46668 1412

Used 2958356 8340 13

Available 26130408 35919 1327

Use% 11% 19% 1%

Mounted on / /boot /mnt/floppy

This example output shows the space available on the hard disk partition mounted on the / (root) partition (/dev/sda1) and /boot partition (/dev/sda2), and the floppy disk mounted on the /mnt/floppy directory (/dev/fd0). Disk space is shown in 1K blocks. To produce output in a more human-readable form, use the -h option: $ df -h Filesystem /dev/sda3 /dev/sda2 /dev/fd0

Size 29G 46M 1.4M

Used 2.9G 8.2M 13k

Avail 24G 25M 1.2M

Use% 11% 19% 1%

Mounted on / /boot /mnt/floppy

With the df -h option, output appears in a friendlier megabyte or gigabyte listing. Other options with df enable you to do the following: ■

Print only file systems of a particular type (-t type)

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Exclude file systems of a particular type (-x type)

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Include file systems that have no space, such as /proc and /dev/pts (-a)

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List only available and used inodes (-i)

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Display disk space in certain block sizes (—block-size=#)

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Checking Disk Usage with du To find out how much space is being consumed by a particular directory (and its subdirectories), use the du command. With no options, du lists all directories below the current directory, along with the space consumed by each directory. At the end, du calculates the total disk space used within that directory structure. The du command is a good way to check how much space is being used by a particular user (du /home/user1) or in a particular file system partition (du /var). By default, disk space is displayed in 1K block sizes. To make the output friendlier (in kilobytes, megabytes, and gigabytes), use the -h option as follows: $ du -h /home/jake 114k /home/jake/httpd/stuff 234k /home/jake/httpd 137k /home/jake/uucp/data 701k /home/jake/uucp 1.0M /home/jake

The output shows the disk space used in each directory under the home directory of the user named jake (/home/jake). Disk space consumed is shown in kilobytes (k) and megabytes (M). The total space consumed by /home/jake is shown on the last line.

Finding Disk Consumption with find The find command is a great way to find file consumption of your hard disk using a variety of criteria. You can get a good idea of where disk space can be recovered by finding files that are over a certain size or were created by a particular person. You must be the root user to run this command effectively, unless you are just checking your personal files. If you are not the root user, there will be many places in the file system that you will not have permission to check. Regular users can usually check their own home directories but not those of others.

NOTE

In the following example, the find command searches the root file system (/) for any files owned by the user named jake (-user jake) and prints the filenames. The output of the find command is organized in a long listing in size order (ls -ldS). Finally, that output is sent to the file /tmp/ jake. When you view the file /tmp/jake (for example, less /tmp/jake), you will find all of the files that are owned by the user jake listed in size order. Here is the command line: # find / -xdev -user jake -print | xargs ls -ldS > /tmp/jake

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The -xdev option prevents file systems other than the selected file system from being searched. This is a good way to cut out a lot of junk that may be output from the /proc file system. It can also keep large remotely mounted file systems from being searched.

TIP

Here’s another example, except that instead of looking for a user’s files, we’re looking for files larger than 100 kilobytes (-size +100k): # find / -xdev -size +100k -print | xargs ls -ldS > /tmp/size

You can save yourself a lot of disk space by just removing some of the largest files that are no longer needed. In this example, you can see large files are sorted by size in the /tmp/size file.

Monitoring System Performance If your Linux system is a multiuser computer, sharing the processing power of that computer can be a major issue. Likewise, any time you can stop a runaway process or reduce the overhead of an unnecessary program running, your Linux server can do a better job serving files, Web pages, or e-mail to the people who rely on it. Some distributions of Linux include graphical utilities to simplify administration, such as System Monitor in Ubuntu (shown in Figure 10-5).

FIGURE 10-5 System Monitor in Ubuntu allows you to view processes, resources, and devices.

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All Linux distributions include utilities that can help you monitor the performance of your Linux system. The kinds of features you want to monitor in Linux include CPU usage, memory usage (RAM and swap space), and overall load on the system. A popular tool for monitoring that information in Linux is the top command. To start the top utility in a Terminal window, type top. The top command determines the largest CPU-consuming processes on your computer, displays them in descending order on your screen, and updates the list every five seconds. By adding the -S option to top, the display shows you the cumulative CPU time for each process, as well as any child processes that may already have exited. If you want to change how often the screen is updated, you can add the -d secs option, where secs is replaced by the number of seconds between updates. By default, processes are sorted by CPU usage. You can sort processes numerically by PID (type N), by age (type A), by resident memory usage (type M), or by time (type T). To return to CPU usage, type P. To terminate a process, type k and enter the PID of the process you want to kill (listed in the left column). Be careful to kill only processes you are sure you don’t need or want.

Summary Although you may be using Linux as a single-user system, many of the tasks you must perform to keep your computer running are defined as administrator tasks. A special user account called the root user is needed to do many of the things necessary to keep Linux working as you would like it to. If you are administering a Linux system used by lots of people, the task of administration becomes even larger. You must be able to add and support users, maintain the file systems, and ensure that system performance serves your users well. To help the administrator, Linux comes with a variety of command-line utilities and graphical windows for configuring and maintaining your system. Commands such as mkfs and mount let you create and mount file systems, respectively. Tools such as top let you monitor system performance.

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ou won’t tap into the real power of Linux until you have connected it to a network — in particular, the Internet. Your computer probably has an Ethernet interface built in, so you can just plug a LAN (local area network) cable into it to connect to a LAN (hub or switch), DSL bridge or router, or cable modem. Some computers, particularly laptops, may have wireless Ethernet hardware built in. Your computer also may have a dial-up modem. Although much more rare these days, there are still cases where someone may have an older computer that has no Ethernet card. Or you may be in a situation in which you need to dial out over regular phone lines to reach your Internet service provider (ISP), and need to use this modem to get on the Internet.

IN THIS CHAPTER Connecting to the Internet Connecting to the Internet with Ethernet Connecting to the Internet with dial-up Connecting to the Internet with wireless

This chapter describes how to connect your Linux system to the Internet. With broadband and wireless networks becoming more prevalent, Ethernet connections are becoming the most common means of connecting to the Internet. For dial-up connections, you’ll see how to use kppp (a dialer GUI that is often packaged with KDE desktops). Sharing Internet connections with multiple desktop systems or even your own mail or Web server is not that difficult to do from a hardware perspective. However, there are some security and configuration issues to consider when you set out to expand how you use your Internet connection. A Linux system includes software that lets you configure it as a firewall, router, and a variety of server types to help you get this done.

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Connecting to the Network Linux supports a wide range of wired and wireless network devices, as well as a dizzying array of network protocols to communicate over that media. As a home or small office Linux user, you can start evaluating how to configure your connection to the Internet from Linux by considering: ■

The type of Internet account you have with your ISP (dial-up or broadband)

■

Whether or not you are connecting a single computer, a bunch of desktops, and/or one or more server machines to the Internet

Connecting via Dial-Up Service Until a few years ago, dial-up was the most common method for an individual to get on to the Internet. Many computers had dial-up modems built into the motherboard or had serial ports where a modem could easily be connected. Many computers today do not include modems, but serial or USB modems can be purchased for just a few dollars if you need to use dial-up. Once you have a modem (56 Kbps speed is the standard today), the only other equipment you need is a regular telephone line. Essentially, you can use a dial-up modem anywhere you can connect to a phone line. Linux contains the tools you need to configure and complete a dial-up connection. Figure 11-1 shows the setup for the connection.

FIGURE 11-1 Connect a modem to a serial or USB port and dial out over regular phone lines. Serial port Telephone jack Modem ISP PPP connection to Internet Linux workstation

One difficulty with using modems in Linux is that many computers with built-in modems (especially laptops) come with what are referred to as Winmodems. With Winmodems, some of the processing normally done on the modem is actually implemented within the Windows system. Winmodems don’t always look like real modems to Linux systems because, without the code that’s inside Windows, they don’t behave like real modems when they are connected to Linux systems. Some Winmodems are supported in Linux, and those are sometimes referred to as Linmodems. If you find that Linux fails to detect your modem, check out the Linmodems Support Page (http:// linmodems.technion.ac.il) or the LinModems.org page (www.linmodems.org). It can help

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you determine if you have a Winmodem and, if so, help you find the right Linmodem driver (if one is available). If you find that you have a Winmodem, you are usually better off getting a real modem instead. An inexpensive external serial modem can save you the trouble of getting and loading a Linmodem driver that may or may not work. Most external modems or internal PCI modems described as being “controller-based” work well in Linux.

TIP

Connecting a Single Computer to Broadband Increasingly, individuals have the option of signing up for broadband Internet service with cable television providers or local telephone companies. These connections typically provide transmission speeds rated at least five times greater than you can get with a dial-up connection. To make broadband connections from your home or small office, you typically need a cable modem or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) modem. Cable modems share the bandwidth of the cable television line coming into your location. DSL uses existing house or office phone wires to connect to the Internet, sharing the wires with your phone service. Because there are many ways that your ISP may be providing your Internet service, you should check with it to get the right hardware you need to connect. In particular, you should know that there are several incompatible DSL standards (ADSL, CDSL, HDSL, SDSL, and so on), so you can’t just go out and buy DSL equipment without some guidance. If you are using an external DSL or cable modem, chances are that a single connection from your Linux machine to that equipment requires only: ■

An Ethernet port on your computer

■

A LAN cable (often provided with the ISP equipment)

■

The DSL router/bridge or cable modem (often provided by ISP)

Figure 11-2 illustrates a Linux computer connected to a broadband cable modem.

FIGURE 11-2 Connect an Ethernet card to broadband and start surfing. Firewall (iptables) Linux DHCP

DSL router or cable modem ISP

Linux Workstation

Broadband Connection

Route to Internet

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Broadband equipment often supplies a service called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). DHCP provides the Internet addresses and other information that a client computer needs to connect to the network. With the cable/DSL modem acting as a DHCP server, you can literally start using the Internet without doing any special configuration in Linux. Just plug in, boot Linux, and start browsing the Web. The DSL or cable modem often acts as a router between the ISP and your computer. Usually that device will also include a firewall configured to do network address translation. Alternatively, some broadband equipment operates in a “bridging mode,” in which it doesn’t do routing, but simply passes data through as though your computer were on the same LAN as that of the ISP. In this setup, the public IP address is assigned to your computer instead of the DSL or cable modem.

NOTE

Connecting Multiple Computers to Broadband Instead of connecting your Linux computer directly to the cable modem or DSL equipment, you can join your machines together on a LAN, and then connect the LAN to your ISP equipment so that everyone in the house or office can share the broadband connection. It’s fairly simple; you just connect your cable/DSL modem to your LAN instead of directly to your Linux box. In this configuration, however, you should consider adding a firewall/router as a buffer between your LAN and the outside world. That machine would perform such duties as: ■

Blocking access — A well-configured firewall blocks access to all ports except those that you need to access the Internet the way you want, thereby minimizing the risks of intruders getting into your LAN.

■

NAT or IP Masquerading — For the most part, you want the computers behind your firewall that are simply desktop systems to not be accessible to others from the Internet. By configuring your firewall to do NAT or IP Masquerading, your computers can be assigned private IP addresses. Your firewall then handles forwarding of messages between your LAN and the Internet. This is a good arrangement for several reasons. For one thing, the IP addresses of your private computers are not exposed to the outside world. Also, you can save the cost of paying your ISP for permanent IP addresses.

■

DHCP service — Many firewall systems can act as a DHCP server. Those private IP addresses you can use with a NAT firewall can be assigned from the DHCP service running on your firewall system. When the client computer on your LAN starts up, besides its IP address, your DHCP service can tell the client the location of its DNS server, gateway to the Internet, or other information.

■

Routing — In the home and small-office LAN environment illustrated in Figure 11-3, the firewall computer often has two Ethernet interfaces: one connected to the LAN and the other to the DSL or cable modem that leads to the ISP. Because the Ethernet interfaces are viewed as being on separate subnetworks, the firewall/router must be configured to forward packets across the two interfaces. It’s not a big deal, but it does require a separate step to tell the firewall system that you want it to forward packets between the two subnetworks.

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Chapter 27 discusses setting up a firewall/router, using a Linux distribution designed specifically for the task.

FIGURE 11-3 A firewall provides a safeguard between your LAN and the Internet. Linux Linux

NAT Hub or switch

Linux firewall/router Broadband connection

Mac

ISP

DHCP

Linux

Windows

In this example, the equipment you need includes: ■

An Ethernet port on each computer plus an extra port for the firewall/router

■

A LAN cable for each computer

■

A hub or a switch

■

A low-end PC (a PC with as little power as a 486 might do) running as a Linux firewall/ router

■

The DSL or cable modem

An alternative to this wired configuration is to replace the hub or switch with a wireless access point. Then each computer equipped with a wireless LAN card can get on the network without wires.

Connecting Servers So far you’ve seen configurations that let one or more computers from your home or small business browse the Web. Allowing someone from the Internet to request services (Web pages, file transfers, and so forth) from your computers requires some extra thought. After you have TCP/IP (the primary set of protocols used on the Internet) configured to connect to your ISP, requests for data can pass in either direction between your computers and the Internet

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unless you use a firewall to restrict traffic. So the same connection you use for Internet browsing can be used to offer services to the Internet, with a few caveats: ■

Permanent IP address — Each time you reboot your computer, your ISP’s DHCP server dynamically assigns your DSL/cable modem’s IP address. For that reason, your IP address could change at each reboot. If you want your servers to be reachable on a permanent basis, you usually need at least one permanent IP address at which people can reach your servers. You will have to ask your ISP about a permanent IP address, and it might cost you extra money to have one.

A service called Dynamic DNS can be used in place of paying for a permanent IP address. With Dynamic DNS, you hire a service to constantly check whether your IP address has changed and assign your DNS host name to the new address if it does. You can search the Web for “Dynamic DNS” to find companies that offer that service.

NOTE

■

ISP acceptable use policy — Check that you are allowed to have incoming connections. Some ISPs, especially for inexpensive, home-use broadband service, will block incoming connections to Web servers or mail servers.

■

DNS hostname — Although typing an IP address into a browser location box works just fine, most people prefer to use names (such as www.linuxtoys.net) to reach a server. That requires you to purchase a DNS domain name and have an entry set up in a DNS server to resolve the name to the IP address of your server.

Although there is nothing magical about setting up an Internet server, given the few issues just mentioned, creating a public server can be a lot like opening up the doors of your house so that strangers can wander in. You want some policies in place to restrict where the strangers can go and what they can do. For home or small-office locations that have a single Internet connection (represented by one public IP address), servers can be more exposed to the Internet than desktop systems by keeping them in one area that’s referred to as the DMZ (demilitarized zone). In this configuration (illustrated in Figure 11-4), servers are directly behind the outside firewall. Desktop systems (that aren’t to be accessible by people from the Internet) are behind a second, more restrictive firewall.

FIGURE 11-4 Add servers to a DMZ where they can be more publicly accessible than your desktop systems. Servers Linux internal firewall/router

Hub/switch NAT

Switch

DHCP

Mail

Linux external firewall/router Broadband connection

ISP

Web FTP

Internal Network

DM2

External Network

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Whether you use Linux or dedicated firewall devices to provide firewall service, the outside firewall allows requests in for Web services (port 80), FTP services (ports 20 and 21), simple mail transfer protocol (port 25), and possibly other services. The internal firewall blocks any requests for services from the outside and allows only Internet communications that were initiated from computers behind the inside firewall. Chapters 13 though 16 explain how to configure different server types, and Chapter 27 describes how to set up Linux as a router/firewall. Chapter 27 includes details on how to configure features such as IP Masquerading, NAT, and packet forwarding.

CROSS-REF

Connecting Other Equipment Although I’ve focused on basic Ethernet equipment and dial-up modems for configuring network connections, Linux supports many, many other types of network equipment as well as different protocols for communicating over that equipment. Here are a few examples: ■

ISDN — Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) lines were the preferred method of high-speed data lines to small businesses in the United States before DSL became widespread. It is still popular in Europe, but is being supplanted by more affordable DSL equipment. ISDN4Linux drivers and tools (www.isdn4linux.de) are available in many Linux systems for connecting to ISDN networks.

■

USB cable modem — Most cable modems offer an Ethernet port that you can connect to directly from your computer’s own Ethernet port. However, if you don’t have an Ethernet port, often you can connect to the cable modem through one of your USB ports. (You may need to manually load usbnet and cdc_ether drivers to get this to work.)

■

Token ring — Although rarely used now, token ring network cards are still supported. Support for token ring network cards is included in most Linux systems, although token rings are rarely used now. They were once popular at locations that had many IBM systems.

■

PLIP — It’s possible to connect two computers together from their parallel ports so that they can communicate using TCP/IP protocols. Parallel Line Internet Protocol (PLIP) requires only a special type of null modem cable (for the specs for that cable, refer to http://tldp.org/HOWTO/NET3-4-HOWTO-9.html). Most Linux systems have built-in software that enables you to log in, transfer files, and perform other activities over that connection.

If your system has Linux source code installed, you can read about supported hardware devices in the documentation that comes with that source code. On Fedora and some other Linux systems, the location of kernel documentation for various networking hardware is /usr/src/linux*/ Documentation/networking.

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Using Ethernet Connections to the Internet Most Linux systems today will either automatically detect or allow you to set up your Internet connection when you install Linux. Here’s the general (default) way that a network connection on a desktop system, with Linux installed, is started up: 1. Check whether you have an Ethernet port on your computer (most recent computers have one). If so, connect your Ethernet card to the equipment that gets you to the Internet (cable modem, DSL router/bridge, or network hub/switch). If not, you can purchase an Ethernet card at any retailer that sells computer hardware. 2. Ensure that appropriate drivers are available for the card and bring up the interface (typically, the first wired Ethernet card is assigned to the eth0 interface). Usually, simply starting the computer causes the card to be detected and the appropriate driver to be loaded. 3. Get an IP address using DHCP if there is a DHCP server available through the interface. Most ISPs and businesses expect you to connect to their networks using DHCP, so they will have provided a DHCP server to the equipment where you connect your computer to the network.

As long as your desktop system is connected to a network that has a DHCP server willing to give it an IP address, you can be up and browsing the Web in no time. If you find that the automatic method (DHCP) of connecting to your network doesn’t work, it gets a bit trickier to connect to the Internet. Different Linux distributions offer different tools for manually configuring your Internet connection. The following sections describe a few graphical tools and some command-line and configuration-file approaches to configuring wired and wireless network connections.

Configuring Ethernet During Installation Many Linux install processes ask you if you want to configure your network connection for your Ethernet cards. This is typically just for your Ethernet cards and not for dial-up modems or other networking equipment. Information you’ll need for that process (IP address, gateway, DNS server, and so on) is explained in Chapter 8. When you boot Linux, you can check whether you have access to the Internet by opening a Web browser (such as Firefox or Konqueror) and typing in a Web address. If the Web site doesn’t appear in your browser, you’ll need to do some troubleshooting. The “Understanding Your Internet Connection” section later in this chapter provides information on how to track down problems with your Internet connection.

Configuring Ethernet from the Desktop Most major Linux distributions offer graphical tools for configuring network interfaces. These tools step you through the information you need to enter, and then start up the network interface (if you choose) to begin browsing the Web.

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Here is a list of tools for configuring network interfaces in a few different Linux distributions. Some of these are graphical tools, and some are menu-based: ■

Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Fedora — The Network Configuration window lets you configure a network connection using Ethernet, ISDN, modem, token ring, wireless, and xDSL hardware. Start the Network Configuration window from the System menu by selecting Administration ➪ Network or by typing system-config-network and entering the root password when prompted. (On older Red Hat Linux systems, the command was redhat-config-network.) The new NetworkManager feature is also available to let you detect and choose wired and wireless interfaces in Fedora.

■

SUSE Linux — The YaST Control Center that comes with SUSE contains features for configuring your network. The YaST Control Center lets you configure a DSL, ISDN, Modem, or Network Card interface to the network. Select Network Card to configure your wired Ethernet Interface to the Internet.

■

Gentoo Linux — From a shell (as root user), type net-setup eth0 to start a menu-driven interface to configure the network connection from your first Ethernet card (eth0). The tool lets you have the interface try to start using DHCP or use static address information that you provide.

■

Ubuntu Linux — Select System ➪ Administration ➪ Network from the GNOME desktop. Enter the administrative password when prompted. From the Network Settings window that appears, double-click the type of interface you want to configure (wireless, wired, or point-to-point connection). A dialog box similar to that shown in Figure 11-5 will appear.

■

KNOPPIX — Select the squished penguin icon in the panel on the KNOPPIX desktop, and choose Networking/Internet from the menu. Select the Network card configuration menu entry to configure your network card. Or select from several other network equipment types instead (ADSL, GPRS, ISDN, Modem, or Wavelan).

FIGURE 11-5 Configuring an interface in Ubuntu

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Using Network Configuration GUI in Fedora An example of a graphical tool for configuring your Ethernet interface is the Network Configuration GUI that comes with Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. If you did not configure your LAN connection during installation of Fedora or RHEL, you can do so at any time using the Network Configuration window. The IP address and hostnames can be assigned statically to an Ethernet interface or retrieved dynamically at boot time from a DHCP server. A computer can have more than one IP address because it can have multiple network interfaces. Each network interface must have an IP address to connect to a network (even if the address is assigned temporarily). So, if you have two Ethernet cards (eth0 and eth1), each needs its own IP address. Also, the address 127.0.0.1 represents the local host so that users on the local computer can access services in loopback.

NOTE

Here’s how to define the IP address for your Ethernet interface in Fedora or RHEL: 1. From the Red Hat menu, choose System ➪ Administration ➪ Network or, as root user from a Terminal window, type system-config-network. (If prompted, type the root password.) The Network Configuration window appears. 2. Click the Devices tab. A listing of your existing network interfaces appears. 3. Double-click the eth0 interface (representing your first Ethernet card). A pop-up window titled Ethernet Device appears (see Figure 11-6), enabling you to configure your eth0 interface. FIGURE 11-6 Configure and activate Ethernet devices in Fedora.

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4. Select your preferences: ■

Activate device when computer starts — Check here to have eth0 start at boot time.

■

Allow all users to enable and disable the device — Check to let non-root users enable and disable the network interface.

■

Enable IPv6 configuration for this interface — Check here if you are connected to an IPV6 network. (Most networks are still IPV4.)

5. You also must choose whether to get your IP addresses from another computer at boot time or enter the addresses yourself: ■

Automatically obtain IP address settings with — Select this box if you have a DHCP or BOOTP server on the network from which you can obtain your computer’s IP address, netmask, and gateway. DHCP is recommended if you have more than just a couple of computers on your LAN. Optionally, you can set your own hostname, which can be just a name (such as jukebox) or a fully qualified domain name (such as jukebox.linuxtoys.net).

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Statically set IP addresses — If there is no DHCP or other boot server on your LAN, add necessary IP address information statically by selecting this option and following these steps: a. Type the IP address of the computer into the Address box. This number must be unique on your network. For your private LAN, you can use private IP addresses. b. Enter the netmask in the Subnet Mask box. The netmask indicates the part of the IP address that represents the network. c. Type the IP address of the computer into the Default Gateway Address box if a computer or router connected to your LAN provides routing functions to the Internet or other network. (Chapter 27 describes how to use NAT or IP Masquerading and how to use Linux as a router.)

6. Click OK in the Ethernet Device window to save the configuration and close the window. 7. Click File ➪ Save to save the information you entered. 8. Click Activate in the Network Configuration window to start your connection to the LAN.

Identifying Other Computers (Hosts and DNS) Each time you use a name to identify a computer, such as when browsing the Web or using an e-mail address, the computer name must be translated into an IP address. To resolve names to IP addresses, Linux goes through a search order (usually based on the contents of three files in /etc: resolv.conf, nsswitch.conf, and host.conf). By default, it checks hostnames you add yourself (which end up in the /etc/hosts file), hosts available via NIS, and host names available via DNS.

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Again, for RHEL and Fedora systems, you can use the Network Configuration window to add: ■

Hostnames — You might do this to identify hosts on your LAN that are not configured on a DNS server.

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DNS search path — By adding domain names to a search path (such as linuxtoys.net), you can browse to a site by its host name (such as jukebox), and have Linux search the domains you added to the search path to find the host you are looking for (such as jukebox.linuxtoys.net).

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DNS name servers — A DNS server can resolve addresses for the domains it serves and contact other DNS servers to get addresses for all other DNS domains.

If you are configuring a DNS server, you can use that server to centrally store names and IP addresses for your LAN. This saves you the trouble of updating every computer’s /etc/hosts file every time you add or change a computer on your LAN.

NOTE

To add hostnames, IP addresses, search paths, and DNS servers in Fedora, do the following: 1. Start the Network Configuration. As root user from a Terminal window, type systemconfig-network or from the top panel, click System ➪ Administration ➪ Network. The Network Configuration window appears. 2. Click the Hosts tab. A list of IP addresses, hostnames, and aliases appears. 3. Click New. An Add/Edit Hosts Entry pop-up window appears. 4. Type in the IP address number, hostname, and, optionally, the host alias. 5. Click OK. 6. Repeat this process until you have added every computer on your LAN that cannot be reached by DNS. 7. Click the DNS tab. 8. Type the IP address of the computers that serve as your Primary and Secondary DNS servers. (You get these IP addresses from your ISP or, if you created your own DNS server, you can enter that server’s IP address.) 9. Type the name of the domain (probably the name of your local domain) to be searched for host names into the DNS Search Path box. 10. Click File ➪ Save to save the changes. 11. Click File ➪ Quit to exit.

Now, when you use programs such as ftp, ssh, or other TCP/IP utilities, you can use any hostname that is identified on your local computer, exists in your search path domain, or can be resolved from the public Internet DNS servers. (Strictly speaking, you don’t have to set up your /etc/hosts file. You could use IP addresses as arguments to TCP/IP commands. But names are easier to work with.)

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Using the Network Settings GUI in Ubuntu In Ubuntu Linux, the Network Settings window lets you configure your network connections. If your computer has an Ethernet card installed, you can use the following procedure to create a network connection to the Internet or other TCP/IP network. 1. Start Network Settings. Click System ➪ Administration ➪ Networking. The Network Settings window appears. 2. Select the Ethernet connection entry on the screen for the interface you want to configure and click Properties. The first Ethernet card should be identified as eth0 (if other Ethernet cards are present, they will be identified as eth1, eth2, and so on). The Interface properties window appears, as shown in Figure 11-7. FIGURE 11-7 Use DHCP or static IP addresses for Ethernet connections in Ubuntu.

Figure 11-7 contains an example of an Ethernet connection configured to use DHCP to get the information it needs to start up (IP address, Subnet mask, and so on) from a DHCP server on your network. The Enable this connection check box indicates that the eth0 connection is started up automatically at boot time. If your cable modem, DSL equipment or other network server offers a DHCP service, the example shown in Figure 11-7 may be all you need to do. However, if no DHCP service is available or you simply want to set your connection information manually, continue to the next step.

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3. If you want to manually configure your Ethernet connection, select the following from the Interface Properties pop-up window: ■

Configuration — Select Static IP address to be able to set your address information manually, instead of getting it automatically from a DHCP service.

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IP address — Type the IP address you want to use for this computer into the IP address box. This number must be unique on your network. For your private LAN, you can use private IP addresses.

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Subnet mask — Enter the netmask in the Subnet mask box. The netmask indicates the part of the IP address that represents the network. For example, a netmask of 255.255.255.0 for the IP address 10.0.0.5 indicates that the network address is 10.0.0 and the host address is 5. Other computers on the network could use the same netmask with IP addresses such as 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2, and so on up to 254.

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Gateway address — Type the IP address of the device that is acting as a router between your computer and the Internet or other network. (See Chapter 27 for information on using NAT or IP Masquerading if you are using Linux as a router.)

Select OK when you have filled in all the necessary information. There are other features you can set as well that relate to your network connections in Ubuntu. From the General tab, you can add the hostname and domain name assigned to your computer. The Hosts tab lets you enter the IP address and hostname for individual hosts that you want to enter manually. From the DNS tab, you can indicate the IP addresses of the servers your computer will use to resolve names of the computers you communicate with (using e-mail, Web browsers, and so on) into IP addresses. You can also indicate the Search Domains value, so those times that you try to connect to a computer by host name, but no domain name, your system knows which domains to search first for that host.

Understanding Your Internet Connection If your Ethernet interface to the Internet is not working, there are ways to check what’s happening that will work on many Linux distributions. Use the following procedure to find out how your network interfaces are working: 1. Open a shell (if you are using a graphical interface, open a Terminal window). 2. Type the following right after you boot your computer to verify whether Linux found your card and installed the Ethernet interface properly: dmesg | grep eth | less

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The dmesg command lists all the messages that were output by Linux at boot time. The grep eth command causes only those lines that contain the word eth to be printed. Here are a couple of examples: eth0: VIA Rhine II at 0xee001000, 00:0d:61:25:d4:17, IRQ 185. eth0: MII PHY found at address 1, status 0x786d advertising 01e1 Link 45e1. eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x45E1 eth0: no IPv6 routers present

The first message appeared on my desktop computer with a VIA Rhine Ethernet controller. It shows that a card was found at software IRQ 185 with a port address of 0xee001000 and an Ethernet hardware address (MAC address) of 00:0d:61:25:d4:17. The other lines indicate that the link is up on the eth0 interface and running at 100 Mbps in fullduplex. In this case, IPv6 routing is not enabled. If the eth0 interface is not found, but you know that you have a supported Ethernet card, type lspci -vv | grep -i eth to see if the Ethernet card is detected on the PCI bus. If it doesn’t appear, check that your Ethernet card is properly seated in its slot. Here’s what appeared for the preceding example:

NOTE

00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)

3. To view which network interfaces are up and running, type the following: $ /sbin/ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0D:61:25:D4:17 inet addr:10.0.0.5 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:326100 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:215931 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:5919 txqueuelen: 1000 RX bytes:168378315 (160.5 Mb) TX bytes:40853243 (38.9 Mb) lo

Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:37435 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:37435 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen: 0 RX bytes:2353172 (2.2 Mb) TX bytes:2353172 (2.2 Mb)

The output shows a loopback interface (lo) and one Ethernet card (eth0). The Ethernet interface (eth0), is assigned the IP address of 10.0.0.5. In this example, the eth0 has an IP

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address of 10.0.0.5. Again, notice that the MAC address, which is a unique address related to the Ethernet card hardware, is noted after the HWaddr indicator (00:0D:61:25:D4:17). 4. Communicate with another computer on the LAN. The ping command can be used to send a packet to another computer and to ask for a packet in return. You can give ping either a hostname (butch) or an IP address (10.0.0.10). For example, to ping a computer on the network called butch, type the following command: # ping butch

If the computer can be reached, the output will look similar to the following: PING butch (10.0.0.10): 56(84) data bytes 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=0.351 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=0.445 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=0.409 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=0.457 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=0.401 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=0.405 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=0.443 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=8 ttl=255 time=0.384 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=9 ttl=255 time=0.365 ms 64 bytes from butch (10.0.0.10): icmp_seq=10 ttl=255 time=0.367 ms --- butch statistics --10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss, time 9011ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.351/0.402/0.457/0.042 ms

A line of output is printed each time a packet is sent and received in return. It shows how much data was sent and how long it took for each package to be received. Watch this for a while, and then press Ctrl+C to stop ping. You’ll see statistics on how many packets were transmitted, received, and lost. If the output doesn’t show that packets have been received, there’s no contact with the other computer. Verify that the names and addresses of the computers that you want to reach are in your /etc/hosts file or that your DNS server is accessible. Next, confirm that the names and IP addresses you have for the other computers you are trying to reach are correct (the IP addresses are the most critical). 5. If you are able to reach an IP address on your LAN with ping, but are unable to ping a host computer by name, you may not be communicating with your DNS server. Repeat the ping command with the IP address of your DNS server to see if it is up and that you are able to communicate with it.

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Using Dial-Up Connections to the Internet On the rare occasion that broadband is not available, you can still connect to the Internet using modems and telephone lines. The modem connects to a serial port (COM1, COM2, and so on) on your computer and then into a telephone jack. Your computer dials a modem at your Internet service provider or business that has a connection to the Internet. The most common protocol for making dial-up connections to the Internet (or other TCP/IP network) is Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP). Let’s look at how to use PPP to connect to the Internet.

CROSS-REF

See Chapter 19 for information on configuring a dial-up connection that is specific to Debian.

Getting Information To establish a PPP connection, you need to get some information from the administrator of the network to which you are connecting. This is either your Internet service provider (ISP) when you sign up for Internet service, or the person in your workplace who walks around carrying cables, two or more cellular phones, and a couple of beepers (when a network goes down, these people are in demand!). Here is the kind of information you need to set up your PPP connection: ■

Telephone number — Gives you access to the modem (or pool of modems) at the ISP. If it is a national ISP, make sure that you get a local or toll-free telephone number (otherwise, you’ll rack up long-distance fees on top of your ISP fees).

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Account name and password — Used to verify that you have an Internet account with the ISP. This is an account name when you connect to Linux or other UNIX system, but may be referred to as a system name when you connect to an NT server.

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An IP number — Most ISPs use Dynamic IP numbers, which means that you are assigned an IP number temporarily when you are connected. Your ISP assigns a permanent IP number if it uses Static IP addresses. If your computer or all the computers on your LAN need to have a more permanent presence on the network, you may be given one Static IP number or a set of Static IP addresses to use.

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DNS Server IP addresses — Your computer translates Internet hostnames to IP addresses by querying a domain name system (DNS) server. Your ISP should give you at least one IP address for a preferred (and possibly alternate) DNS server.

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PAP or CHAP secrets — You may need a PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) ID or CHAP (Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol) ID and a secret, instead of a username and password when connecting to a Windows NT system. These features are used with authentication on Microsoft and some other operating systems. Linux and other UNIX servers don’t typically use this type of authentication, although they support PAP and CHAP on the client side. Your ISP will tell you if you are using PAP or CHAP.

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Your ISP typically provides services such as news and mail servers for use with your Internet connection. To configure these useful services, you need the following information: ■

Mail server — If your ISP is providing you with an e-mail account, you must know the address of the mail server, the type of mail service (such as POP3 — Post Office Protocol; or IMAP — Internet Message Access Protocol), and the authentication password for the mail server so you can get your e-mail.

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News server — If your ISP provides the name of a news server so that you can participate in newsgroups, the server may require you to log on, so you need a password. The ISP provides that password, if required.

After you’ve gathered this information, you’re ready to set up your connection to the Internet. To configure Linux to connect to your ISP, read on.

Setting Up Dial-Up PPP PPP is used to create IP connections over serial lines. Most often, the serial connection is established over a modem; however, it also works over serial cables (null modem cables) or digital lines (including ISDN and DSL). Although one side must dial out and the other side must receive the call to create the PPP connection over a modem, after the connection is established, information can flow in both directions. For the sake of clarity, however, I refer to the computer placing the call as the client and the computer receiving the call as the server. To simplify the process of configuring PPP (and other network interfaces), most Linux systems include graphical tools to configure dial-up. Two such tools, available with Fedora and RHEL, are: ■

Network Configuration Window — The same utility used to configure Ethernet cards can be used to configure modems. From the GNOME top panel in Fedora and RHEL systems, choose System ➪ Administration ➪ Network. When that window appears, select New. The Select Device Type pop-up that appears enables you to configure and test your modem for a dial-up PPP connection.

■

KDE PPP (KPPP) Window — From the KDE desktop, select Internet ➪ KPPP, or from a Terminal window run the kppp command. From the KPPP window, you can set up and launch a PPP dial-up connection.

Before you begin either of these procedures, physically connect your modem to your computer, plug it in, and connect it to your telephone line. If you have an internal modem, you will probably see a telephone port on the back of your computer to which you need to connect. If your modem isn’t detected, you can reboot your computer or run wvdialconf create (as described later in this chapter) to have it detected.

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Creating a Dial-Up Connection with the Internet Configuration Wizard If you are using a Fedora or RHEL system, you can use the Internet Configuration Wizard to set up dial-up networking. Here’s how: 1. Choose System ➪ Administration ➪ Network. When the window appears, select New. (Type the root password, if prompted.) An Add New Device Type window appears (see Figure 11-8). FIGURE 11-8 The Internet Configuration Wizard helps you set up a PPP Internet connection.

2. Select Modem connection and click Forward. The wizard searches for a modem and then the Select Modem window appears. 3. Select the following modem properties: ■

Modem Device — If the modem is connected to your first serial port (COM1) you can select /dev/ttyS0; for the second serial port (COM2) choose /dev/ttyS1. (By convention, the device is often linked to /dev/modem. Type ls –l /dev/modem to see if it is linked to /dev/ttyS0, /dev/ttyS1, or another tty device.)

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Baud Rate — This is the rate at which the computer talks to the modem (which is typically considerably faster than the modem can talk over the phone lines). The default is 115200 bits per second, which is probably fine for dial-up connections.

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Flow Control — Check the modem documentation to see if the modem supports hardware flow control (CRTSCTS). If it doesn’t, select software flow control (XON/XOFF). Flow control prevents more data than the modem can handle from being sent to it.

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Modem Volume — This is off by default because the noise can be annoying, but if you select medium while you’re setting up the modem, the sound can give you a sense of where things are stopping if you can’t get a connection. You can turn it off after everything’s working.

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Use Touch Tone Dialing — Leave this check box selected in most cases. If for some reason your phone system doesn’t support touch-tone dialing, you can turn it off.

4. Click Forward. The Select Provider window appears. Enter the following provider information: ■

Internet Provider — If you are using Internet service in any of the countries shown in the Internet Provider window, select the plus sign next to that country name. If your Internet service provider appears in the National list, select it. Information is automatically filled in for that provider. Otherwise, you need to fill in the rest of the dialog box.

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Phone Number — The telephone number of the ISP you want to dial in to. (An optional prefix is available in case you need to dial 9 or some other number to get an outside dial tone.)

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Provider Name — The name of the Internet service provider. If there is only one ISP, I recommend you use it as the ppp0 provider name.

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Login Name — The login name assigned to you by the ISP. The ISP may have called the login name a login ID or something similar.

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Password — The password associated with the login name.

5. Click Forward, and the IP Settings window appears. With a dial-up connection, you would typically select Automatically Obtain IP Address Settings. However, if the ISP has assigned a static IP address that you can use, select the Statically Set IP Addresses check box, and then enter your IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway address in the appropriate fields. Click Forward to continue. 6. The Create Dialup Connection window appears, displaying the information you just entered. If all the information looks correct, click Apply (otherwise, click the Back button, correct your information, and click Forward again to return to this window). 7. After you click Apply, the Network Configuration window appears, ideally with a new PPP connection of modem type appearing in the window. (If it doesn’t appear, select System Settings ➪ Network.) 8. Select the new dial-up entry (so it is highlighted), and choose File ➪ Save to save its new configuration.

Now select the PPP device name and click the Activate button. The Internet dialer starts up and dials your ISP. (If you have sound turned on, you should hear your modem dialing out.) If everything is working properly, your login and password are accepted and the PPP connection is made. Try opening Firefox or another Web browser to see if you can access a Web site on the Internet. If this doesn’t work the first time, don’t be discouraged. There are things to check to get your dial-up PPP connection working. Skip ahead to the “Checking Your PPP Connection” section.

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Launching Your PPP Connection Your dial-up connection is now configured, but it is not set to connect automatically. One way to start the connection is to set it up to launch manually from the desktop panel. Here’s how: From the GNOME desktop: 1. Right-click the panel, choose Add to Panel ➪ Modem Lights, and then select Add. A Modem Lights icon appears on the panel. 2. Select the new icon from the panel. You are asked if you want to start a connection with your modem. 3. Select Connect to start the connection.

From the KDE desktop: 1. Right-click the panel and then choose Add Application to Panel ➪ Internet ➪ KPPP. 2. Select the new icon from the panel (type the root password, if prompted). A KPPP window appears. 3. Select the dial-up interface you added (probably ppp0) and click Connect to connect.

From this point forward, icons appear on your desktop that you can select to immediately connect to your ISP over the dial-up connection you configured.

Launching Your PPP Connection on Demand Instead of starting a dial-up PPP connection manually each time you want to contact the Internet, you can set your dial-up connection to start automatically when an application (such as a Web browser or an e-mail program) tries to use the connection. On-demand dialing is particularly useful if: ■

The dial-up connection on your Linux system is acting as the gateway for other computers in your home or office. You don’t have to run over to your Linux box to start the connection when another computer needs the dial-up connection.

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Programs that you run during off hours, such as remote backups, require an Internet connection.

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You don’t want to be bothered clicking an extra icon when you just want to browse the Web a bit.

The risk of on-demand dialing is that because it gets going automatically, the dial-up connection can start up when you don’t want it to. (Some people get worried when their computers start dialing by themselves in the middle of the night.)

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For RHEL and Fedora systems, here is an example of settings you can add to your dial-up configuration file (probably /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ppp0) to configure on-demand dialing: ONBOOT=yes DEMAND=yes IDLETIMEOUT=600 RETRYTIMEOUT=30

The ONBOOT=yes setting starts the pppd daemon (but doesn’t immediately begin dialing because DEMAND is set to yes). Also, because of the setting DEMAND=yes, a dial-up connection attempt is made any time traffic tries to use your dial-up connection. With IDLETIMEOUT set to 600, the connection is dropped after 600 seconds (10 minutes) with no traffic on the connection. With RETRYTIMEOUT set to 30, a dropped connection is retried after 30 seconds (unless the connection was dropped by an idle timeout, in which case there is no retry). You can change the timeout values as it suits you. Because it can take a bit of time for dial-up connections to be established, operations may fail while dialing occurs. In particular, DNS requests can time out in 30 seconds, which may not be long enough to establish a dial-up connection. If you have three DNS servers configured for each client, you have a 90-second timeout period. As a result, the modem connection may be running before the request fails.

NOTE

Checking Your PPP Connection To debug your PPP connection or simply to better understand how it works, you can run through the steps below. They will help you understand where information is being stored and how tools can be used to track this information.

Checking That Your Modem Was Detected It is possible that your modem is not supported under Linux. If that is the case, your PPP connection might be failing because the modem was not detected at all. To scan your serial ports to see where your modem might be, type the following (as root user): $ wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf.new

The wvdialconf command builds a configuration file (in this example, the /etc/wvdial.conf .new file) that is used by the dialer command (wvdial). (You need this file only if you use wvdial to do your dial-up.) Its first action, however, is to scan the serial ports on your computer and report where it finds modems. If it tells you that no modem was detected, it’s likely that either your modem isn’t connected properly or no driver is available to support the modem. If the modem wasn’t detected, you should determine whether it is a modem supported in Linux. You can do this by finding out what type of chip set is used in the modem. This is even more important than finding out the manufacturer of the modem because the same manufacturer can use chips from different companies. (This applies primarily to internal modems because most external serial modems and many USB modems are supported in Linux.)

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After you have determined the chip set being used, check the Linmodems.org Web site (www .linmodems.org). Search for the chip set on your modem from this site. In many cases, the site can tell you if there is a driver available for your modem. A nice tool for determining what type of Winmodem you have and how to get it working is scanModem. If you have access to the Internet from another machine, you can download scanModem from this address: http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/scanModem.gz

Because you probably don’t have a working Internet connection yet, find a way to copy scanModem.gz to your Linux system (maybe copy it to a flash drive or burn it to a CD). As root user from a Terminal window, type these commands, with that file in the current directory: # gunzip scanModem.gz # chmod 755 scanModem # ./scanModem

The result is a Modem directory containing text files describing your modem and what you can do to configure it. If you are a new Linux user with a Winmodem and you are still baffled after referring to the linmodems.org site, you might consider getting a serial or USB modem. To get your Winmodem working, you might need to download, compile, and load a modem driver. Especially with some older Winmodems, drivers have not all been updated to work with the latest kernels. Picking up a cheap serial modem (under $20) from a used computer store can save hours of frustration that may still result in failure.

NOTE

Connecting to the Internet with Wireless Setting up a wireless network connection used to be one of the more challenging features to get working in Linux. Despite improvements to open source drivers for many wireless devices, you can’t assume that any wireless card connected to a computer running Linux will just work. Wireless card manufacturers have, for the most part, not released specifications for their equipment that would allow open source developers to create Linux drivers. Most vendors simply produce binary-only drivers for Microsoft Windows systems. As a result of this state of the wireless world, the following wireless projects have emerged to help Linux users: ■

ndiswrappers (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net) — This project lets you use wireless drivers in Linux that were created to run in Windows.

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madwifi (http://madwifi.org) — Supports drivers for wireless chip sets from Atheros (www.atheros.com).

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Intel PRO/Wireless for Linux (http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net) — There are several wireless driver projects to support drivers for Intel PRO/Wireless hardware.

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Because wireless card firmware is required in order to get many wireless networking cards to work, many major Linux distributions resisted including that software with their systems. Recently, however, Fedora, Ubuntu, and other distributions have begun including wireless firmware. As a result, many wireless cards will work out of the box with those systems. Additional wireless drivers are available from third-party software repositories. For example, if you are using Fedora, you can get ndiswrapper and madwifi RPM packages from the third-party rpm.livna.org site. Once the proper driver for your wireless card is installed and activated, different tools are available for configuring your wireless cards in different Linux releases. Here are examples: ■

Wireless in Fedora — In Fedora, use the NetworkManager to configure your wireless network cards. It should be on by default. If it’s not, however, as root you can type the following: service NetworkManager on. Then configure your wireless connection from a network icon that appears in the panel.

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Wireless in KNOPPIX — In KNOPPIX, try KWiFiManager. From the KDE menu, select KNOPPIX ➪ Network/Internet ➪ KWiFiManager.

For further information on configuring wireless devices in Linux, refer to the Wireless LAN resources for Linux page: http://hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html

If you find that you are unable to get the driver for your particular wireless card working at all, determine the type of card you have, using one of the following commands: # dmesg |grep -i wireless # lspci -vv |grep -i wireless

Then use some search tool, such as Google, to search for the name and model of your wireless card, along with the word “Linux” or the particular distribution of Linux you are using. Chances are, if your wireless device is at all popular, someone else has tried to get it working in Linux and has probably shared their experiences somewhere online.

Summary There are many different tools for configuring network connections in the various Linux distributions. Fedora and other Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems use a graphical Network Configuration. SUSE Linux uses its YaST administrative interface to configure network equipment. For dial-up networks, the KDE desktop includes the kppp GUI tool for configuring modems. If your network connection doesn’t start up automatically (as it does in many cases), this chapter explains how to use some of these network configuration tools to configure it manually. By adding your computer to a public network, such as the Internet, you open it to possible intruders. The next chapter describes ways in which you can secure your computer from unwanted access.

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S

ince the dawn of interconnected networks, some users have been trying to break into other users’ systems. As the Internet has grown and broadband Internet access has spread, the problem has become more severe. A home computer running an insecure configuration can be used as a powerful mail relay, provide storage for traffic in pirated data, allow the user’s personal information to become compromised, or any number of other such horrors. Once upon a time, network attacks required some effort and skill on the part of the attacker. Today, automated tools can get even the most novice user up and running trying to compromise network-attached systems in an alarmingly short time. Additionally, worms have the capability to turn large numbers of insecure systems into an army of “zombies” usable for massive, coordinated, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Why should you care about security? According to the Internet Storm Center (http://isc.sans.org), a computer connected to the Internet has an average of 16 minutes before it falls under some form of attack. Securing any computer system is not hugely difficult; it simply requires some common sense and careful application of good security practices.

IN THIS CHAPTER Linux security checklist Using password protection Monitoring log files Communicating with Secure Shell tools Understanding attack techniques Protecting servers with certificates Using special Linux security tools distributions

In many cases, good practices for setting and protecting passwords, monitoring log files, and creating good firewalls will keep out many would-be intruders. Sometimes, more proactive approaches are needed to respond to break-ins. Many tasks associated with securing your Linux system are common to desktop and server systems. However, because servers allow some level of access by outside clients, there are special considerations for protecting servers.

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This chapter describes general tasks for securing Linux systems and techniques for securing desktop and server systems. It then describes some tools you can try out from a bootable Linux system to troubleshoot your computer and network.

Linux Security Checklist While most Linux systems offer all the tools you need to secure your computer, if you are reckless, someone can (and probably will) harm your system, take it over, or try to steal your data. Keep in mind that no security measures are 100 percent reliable and that, given physical access to a computer or an unlimited amount of time to try to break in, a skilled and determined cracker can break into any computer. That said, however, there are many safeguards you can take to improve your chances of keeping your Linux system safe. The following checklist covers a range of security features to protect your Linux desktop or server. ■

Control physical access. Keeping your computer behind locked doors is a good idea, especially if it contains critical data. You can limit what a person can do to your computer with physical access by enabling passwords in the BIOS (to prevent the computer from booting at all) and in the GRUB or LILO boot loader. You can also limit which devices can be booted in the BIOS.

■

Add users and passwords. Creating separate user accounts (each with a good password) is your first line of defense in keeping your data secure. Users are protected from each other, as well as from an outsider who takes over one user account. Setting up group accounts can extend the concept of ownership to multiple users. See Chapter 10 for more on setting up user accounts and also see “Using Password Protection” later in this chapter.

■

Set read, write, and execute permissions. Every item in a Linux system (including files, directories, applications, and devices) can be restricted by read, write, and execute permissions for that item’s owner and group, as well as for all others. In this way, for example, you can let other users run a command or open a file, without allowing them to change it. See Chapter 9 for information on setting file and directory permissions.

■

Protect the root user. In standard Linux systems, the root user (as well as other administrative user accounts such as Apache) has special abilities to use and change your Linux system. Protect the root account’s password and don’t use the root account when you don’t need to. An open shell or desktop owned by the root user can be a target for attack. Running graphical administration windows as a regular user (entering the root password as prompted) and running administrative commands using sudo can reduce exposure to attacks on your root account. See Chapter 10 for information on handling the root user account.

NOTE

Some distributions, such as Ubuntu, simplify the protection of the root account by automatically disabling it.

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■

Use trusted software. While there are no guarantees with open source software, you have a better chance of avoiding compromised software by using an established Linux distribution (such as Fedora, Debian, or SUSE). Software repositories where you get add-on packages or updates should likewise be scrutinized. Using valid GPG public keys can help ensure that the software you install comes from a valid vendor. And, of course, always be sure of the source of data files you receive before opening them in a Linux application. If you download full ISO images of a distribution, check their integrity using MD5 or SHA1 checksums provided from their creator.

■

Get software updates. As vulnerabilities and bugs are discovered in software packages, every major Linux distribution (including Debian, SUSE, Gentoo, and Red Hat distributions) offers tools for getting and installing those updates. Be sure to get those updates, especially if you are using Linux as a server. These tools include apt, yum, and emerge.

■

Use secure applications. Even with software that is valid and working, some applications offer better protection from attack or invasion than others. For example, if you want to log in to a computer over the Internet, the Secure Shell (SSH) service is considered more secure than rlogin or telnet services (which pass clear-text passwords). Also, some services that are thought to be insecure if you expose them on the Internet (such as Samba and NFS) can be used more securely over the Internet through VPN tunnels (such as IPSec or CIPE).

■

Use restrictive firewalls. A primary job of a firewall is to accept requests for services from a network that you want to allow and turn away requests that you don’t (based primarily on port numbers requested). A desktop system should refuse requests that come in on most ports. A server system should allow requests for a controlled set of ports. See Chapter 27 for information on how to set up a firewall using iptables.

■

Enable only services you need. To offer services in Linux (such as Web, file, or mail services), a daemon process will listen on a particular port number. Don’t enable services you don’t need.

12

A program that runs quietly in the background handling service requests (such as sendmail) is called a daemon. Usually, daemons are started automatically when your system boots up and they keep running until your system is shut down. Daemons may also be started on an as-needed basis by xinetd, a special daemon that listens on a large number of port numbers and then launches the requested process.

NOTE

■

Limit access to services. You can restrict access to a service you want to have on by allowing access only from a particular host computer, domain, or network interface. For example, a computer with interfaces to both the Internet and a local LAN might limit access to a service such as NFS to computers on the LAN, but not offer those same services to the Internet. Services may limit access in their own configuration files or using TCP/IP wrappers (described later in this chapter).

■

Check your system. Linux has tons of tools available for checking the security of your system. After you install Linux, you can check access to its ports using nmap or watch network traffic using Ethereal. You can also add popular security tools such as Nessus, to get

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a more complete view of your system security. Security tools included on the CD and DVD with this book are described in this chapter. ■

NOTE ■

Monitor your system. You can log almost every type of activity on your Linux system. System log files, using the syslogd and klogd facilities, can be configured to track as much or as little of your system activity as you choose. Utilities such as logwatch provide easy ways to have the potential problem messages forwarded to your administrative e-mail account. Linux logging features are described later in this chapter. Remember that monitoring your system does not mean that you simply turn on logging — you must also carefully monitor those logs and react to what they tell you.

Use SELinux. SELinux is an extraordinarily rich (and complex) facility for managing the access of nearly every aspect of a Linux system. It addresses the if-I-get-root-access-I-ownyour-box shortcomings of Linux and UNIX systems for highly secure environments. Red Hat systems offer a useful, limited set of SELinux policies that are turned on by default in Fedora. Other Linux distributions are working on and including SELinux implementations as well. Figure 12-1 shows an example of the SELinux Administration tool included with Fedora (select System ➪ Administration ➪ SELinux Management), while Figure 12-2 shows the SELinux Troubleshooter (select Applications ➪ System Tools ➪ SELinux Troubleshooter).

FIGURE 12-1 SELinux utilities are included with Fedora.

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FIGURE 12-2 The SELinux Troubleshooter will identify areas of concern.

Finding Distribution-Specific Security Resources Most major Linux distributions have resources devoted to helping you secure Linux and keep up with security information that is specific to that version of Linux. Here are a few online resources that focus on security for several Linux distributions: ■

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora security — Check the Red Hat Security site (www.redhat.com/security) for RHEL security issues (that typically relate to Fedora systems as well). From here you can look for and read about available updates. You can also get information on security training and consulting from Red Hat, Inc. For Fedora security issues, see the Fedora Wiki (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Security/ Features). Refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Security Guide for an in-depth look at Linux security for Red Hat systems. You can access this guide online from the following address: www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/ Security-Guide

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■

Debian security — The Debian Security Information page (www.debian.org/security) provides a central point for finding security advisories, answers to common Debian security questions, and links to security documents. You can find the Securing Debian online manual here: www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto

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Ubuntu security — Find security guides and tools for Ubuntu on the Ubuntu security page (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Security).

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Gentoo security — Included on the Gentoo Linux Security page (www.gentoo.org/ security) are tools, announcements, and links to security policy and project documents associated with securing Gentoo systems. Find the Gentoo security handbook here: www.gentoo.org/doc/en/security

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Slackware security — To keep up with Slackware security issues, refer to the Slackware Security Advisories (www.slackware.com/security). You can also join the security mailing list (www.slackware.com/lists) for Slackware.

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SUSE security — Online security support for SUSE is provided by SUSE’s parent company, Novell. Find links to a variety of SUSE security topics from this site: www.novell.com/linux/security/securitysupport.html

For openSUSE, visit this site: www.novell.com/products/opensuse/security.html

Finding General Security Resources There are many computer security Web resources that now offer information that is particularly useful to Linux system administrators. Here are a few sites you can check out: ■

CERT (www.cert.org) — The CERT Coordination center follows computer security issues. Check its home page for the latest vulnerability issues. The site has many tips, including recommendations on what you should do if your computer has been compromised (www.cert.org/tech_tips/win-UNIX-system_compromise.html).

■

SecurityFocus (www.securityfocus.com) — In addition to offering news and information on general computer security topics, SecurityFocus also offers several Linux-specific resources. In particular, you can subscribe to receive a weekly Linux Security News newsletter.

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LinuxSecurity (www.linuxsecurity.com) — This site contains many news articles and features related to Linux security. It also tracks security advisories for more than a dozen Linux distributions.

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Using Linux Securely Getting and keeping your Linux systems secure means not only making good decisions about how you initially set up your system but also how you use it going forward. Whether you are using your Linux system as a desktop or server system, good security practices related to passwords, using secure applications, and monitoring log files are always important. Setting up a secure firewall (as described in Chapter 27) is critical to having a secure Linux system. There are also other security measures you should apply to Linux. This section describes some good practices for using passwords, keeping track of system activity by watching log files, and communicating with other systems using Secure Shell (SSH) applications.

Using Password Protection Passwords are the most fundamental security tool of any modern operating system and consequently, the most commonly attacked security feature. It is natural to want to choose a password that is easy to remember, but very often this means choosing a password that is also easy to guess. Crackers know that on any system with more than a few users, at least one person is likely to have an easily guessed password. By using the “brute force” method of attempting to log in to every account on the system and trying the most common passwords on each of these accounts, a persistent cracker has a good shot of finding a way in. Remember that a cracker will automate this attack, so thousands of login attempts are not out of the question. Obviously, choosing good passwords is the first and most important step to having a secure system. Here are some things to avoid when choosing a password: ■

Do not use any variation of your login name or your full name. Even if you use varied case, append or prepend numbers or punctuation, or type it backwards, this will still be an easily guessed password.

■

Do not use a dictionary word, even if you add numbers or punctuation to it.

■

Do not use proper names of any kind.

■

Do not use any contiguous line of letters or numbers on the keyboard (such as “qwerty” or “asdfg”).

Choosing Good Passwords A good way to choose a strong password is to take the first letter from each word of an easily remembered sentence. The password can be made even better by adding numbers, punctuation, and varied case. The sentence you choose should have meaning only to you, and should not be publicly available (choosing a sentence on your personal Web page is a bad idea). Table 12-1 lists examples of strong passwords and the tricks used to remember them.

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TABLE 12-1

Ideas for Good Passwords Password

How to Remember It

Mrci7yo!

My rusty car is 7 years old!

2emBp1ib

2 elephants make BAD pets, 1 is better

ItMc?Gib

Is that MY coat? Give it back

The passwords look like gibberish but are actually rather easy to remember. As you can see, I can place emphasis on words that stand for capital letters in the password. You set your password using the passwd command. Type the passwd command within a command shell, and it will enable you to change your password. First, it prompts you to enter your old password. To protect against someone “shoulder surfing” and learning your password, the password will not be displayed as you type. Several distributions include random password generators that can be used to conjure up secure passwords. Figure 12-3, for example, shows a password generator in the Users and Groups tool available in Ubuntu.

NOTE

FIGURE 12-3 Generating random passwords

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Assuming you type your old password correctly, the passwd command will prompt you for the new password. When you type in your new password, the passwd command checks the password against cracklib to determine if it is a good or bad password. Non-root users will be required to try a different password if the one they have chosen is not a good password. The root user is the only user who is permitted to assign bad passwords. Once the password has been accepted by cracklib, the passwd command asks you to enter the new password a second time to make sure there are no typos (which are hard to detect when you can’t see what you are typing). When running as root, it is possible to change a user’s password by supplying that user’s login name as a parameter to the passwd command. For example: # passwd joe Changing password for user joe. New UNIX password: ******** Retype new UNIX password: ******** passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.

Here the passwd command prompts you twice to enter a new password for joe. It does not prompt you for his old password in this case. This allows root to reset a user’s password when that user has forgotten it (an event that happens all too often).

Using a Shadow Password File In early versions of UNIX, all user account and password information was stored in a file that all users could read (although only root could write to it). This was generally not a problem because the password information was encrypted. The password was encrypted using a trapdoor algorithm, meaning the unencoded password could be encoded into a scrambled string of characters, but the string could not be translated back to the non-encoded password. In other words, the trapdoor implies that encryption only goes in one direction, so the encrypted password can’t be used to go back to the unencoded password. How does the system check your password in this case? When you log in, the system encodes the password you entered, compares the resulting scrambled string with the scrambled string that is stored in the password file, and grants you access only if the two match. Have you ever asked a system administrator what the password on your account is only to hear, “I don’t know” in response? If so, this is why: The administrator really doesn’t have the password, only the encrypted version. The unencoded password exists only at the moment you type it.

Breaking Encrypted Passwords There is a problem with people being able to see encrypted passwords, however. Although it may be difficult (or even impossible) to reverse the encryption of a trapdoor algorithm, it is very easy to encode a large number of password guesses and compare them to the encoded passwords in the password file. This is, in order of magnitude, more efficient than trying actual login attempts for each user name and password. If a cracker can get a copy of your password file, he or she has a much better chance of breaking into your system.

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Fortunately, Linux and all modern UNIX systems support a shadow password file by default. The shadow file is a special version of the passwd file that only root can read. It contains the encrypted password information, so passwords can be left out of the passwd file, which any user on the system can read. Linux supports the older, single password file method as well as the newer shadow password file. You should always use the shadow password file (it is used by default).

Checking for the Shadow Password File The password file is named passwd and can be found in the /etc directory. The shadow password file is named shadow and is also located in /etc. If your /etc/shadow file is missing, it is likely that your Linux system is storing the password information in the /etc/passwd file instead. Verify this by displaying the file with the less command. # less /etc/passwd

Something similar to the following should be displayed: root:DkkS6Uke799fQ:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin: daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin:/bin/sh . . . mary:KpRUp2ozmY5TA:500:100:Mary Smith:/home/mary:/bin/bash joe:0sXrzvKnQaksI:501:100:Joe Johnson:/home/joe:/bin/bash jane:ptNoiueYEjwX.:502:100:Jane Anderson:/home/jane:/bin/bash bob:Ju2vY7A0X6Kzw:503:100:Bob Reynolds:/home/bob:/bin/bash

Each line in this listing corresponds to a single user account on the Linux system. Each line is made up of seven fields separated by colon (:) characters. From left to right, the fields are the login name, the encrypted password, the user ID, the group ID, the description, the home directory, and the default shell. Looking at the first line, you see that it is for the root account and has an encrypted password of DkkS6Uke799fQ. You can also see that root has a user ID of zero, a group ID of zero, and a home directory of /root, and root’s default shell is /bin/bash. All of these values are quite normal for a root account, but seeing that encrypted password should set off alarm bells in your head. It confirms that your system is not using the shadow password file. At this point, you should immediately convert your password file so that it uses /etc/shadow to store the password information. You do this by using the pwconv command. Simply log in as root (or use the su command to become root) and enter the pwconv command at a prompt. It will print no messages, but when your shell prompt returns, you should have a /etc/shadow file, and your /etc/passwd file should now look like this: root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash bin:x:1:1:bin:/bin: daemon:x:2:2:daemon:/sbin: . . .

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mary:x:500:100:Mary Smith:/home/mary:/bin/bash joe:x:501:100:Joe Johnson:/home/joe:/bin/bash jane:x:502:100:Jane Anderson:/home/jane:/bin/bash bob:x:503:100:Bob Reynolds:/home/bob:/bin/bash

Encrypted password data is replaced with an x. Password data has been moved to /etc/shadow. There is also an Authentication Configuration utility (available with Fedora and RHEL systems) that you can use to manage shadow passwords and other system authentication information. This tool has features that enable you to work with MD5 passwords, LDAP authentication, or Kerberos 5 authentication as well. Select System ➪ Administration ➪ Authentication, and step through the screens to use it. To work with passwords for groups, you can use the grpconv command to convert passwords in /etc/groups to shadowed group passwords in /etc/gshadow. If you change passwd or group passwords and something breaks (you are unable to log in to the accounts), you can use the pwunconv and grpunconv commands, respectively, to reverse password conversion. So, now you are using the shadow password file and picking good passwords. You have made a great start toward securing your system. You may also have noticed by now that security is not just a onetime job. It is an ongoing process, as much about policies as programs. Keep reading to learn more.

Using Log Files If you make use of good firewalling practices as described in Chapter 27, you will be well prepared to mitigate and prevent most cracker attacks. If your firewall should fail to stop an intrusion, you must be able to recognize the attack when it is occurring. Understanding the various (and numerous) log files in which Linux records important events is critical to this goal. The log files for your Linux system can be found in the /var/log directory. Most Linux systems make use of log-viewing tools, either provided with the desktop environment (such as GNOME) or as a command you can execute from a Terminal window. GNOME-based desktops often include a System Log Viewer window (gnome-system-log command) that you can use to view and search critical system log files from the GUI. To open the System Log Viewer window from the top panel in a Fedora GNOME desktop, select Applications ➪ System Tools ➪ System Log. Figure 12-4 shows an example of the System Log Viewer window. To view a particular log file, click the log name in the left column. Choose a date from the calendar in the lower-left corner to view log messages for a particular date.

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FIGURE 12-4 Display system log files in the System Log Viewer window.

Table 12-2 contains a listing of log files displayed in the System Log Viewer window, along with other files in the /var/log directory that may interest you. (Select File ➪ Open to open a log file that doesn’t appear in the left column.) Many of these files are included with most Linux systems and are viewable only by root. Also, some Linux systems may use different file or directory names (for example, /etc/httpd is /etc/apache on some Linux systems). Because these logs are stored in plain-text files, you can view them using any text editor (such as vi or gedit) or paging command (such as the less command).

TABLE 12-2

Log Files in the /var/log Directory System Logs Name

Filename

Description

Boot Log

boot.log

Contains messages indicating which systems services have started and shut down successfully and which (if any) have failed to start or stop. The most recent bootup messages are listed near the end of the file.

Cron Log

cron

Contains status messages from the crond, a daemon that periodically runs scheduled jobs, such as backups and log file rotation.

Kernel Startup Log

dmesg

A recording of messages printed by the kernel when the system boots.

FTP Log

xferlog

Contains information about files transferred using the FTP service.

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a

System Logs Name

Filename

Description

Apache Access Log

httpd/ access_log

Logs requests for information from your Apache Web server.

Apache Error Log

httpd/ error_log

Logs errors encountered from clients trying to access data on your Apache Web server.

Mail Log

maillog

Contains information about addresses to which and from which e-mail was sent. Useful for detecting spamming.

MySQL Server Log

mysqld.log

Includes information related to activities of the MySQL database server (mysqld).

News Log

spooler

Directory containing logs of messages from the Usenet News server if you are running one.

RPM Packages

rpmpkgs

Contains a listing of RPM packages that are installed on your system. (For systems that are not based on RPM packaging, look for a debian-installer or packages directory to find lists of installed packages.)

Security Log

secure

Records the date, time, and duration of login attempts and sessions.

System Log

messages

A general-purpose log file to which many programs record messages.

X.Org X11 Log

Xorg.0.log

Includes messages output by the X.Org X server.

a

gdm/:0.log

Holds messages related to the login screen (GNOME display manager).

a

samba/log. smbd

Shows messages from the Samba SMB file service daemon.

a

squid/ access.log

Contains messages related to the squid proxy/caching server.

a

vsftpd.log

Contains messages relating to transfers made using the vsFTPd daemon (FTP server).

a

sendmail

Shows error messages recorded by the sendmail daemon.

a

uucp

Shows status messages from the UNIX to UNIX Copy Protocol daemon.

12

Indicates a log file that is not contained in the System Log Viewer window. Access these files directly from /var/log.

The GNOME desktop also includes Seahorse — a front-end to GNU Privacy Guard. Seahorse allows you to digitally sign or authenticate documents and works with OpenPGP and SSH keys. You can find more information at www.gnome.org/projects/seahorse/ index.html.

NOTE

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The Role of syslogd Most of the files in the /var/log directory are maintained by the syslogd service. The syslogd daemon is the system logging daemon. It accepts log messages from a variety of other programs and writes them to the appropriate log files. This is better than having every program write directly to its own log file because it enables you to centrally manage how log files are handled. It is possible to configure syslogd to record varying levels of detail in the log files. It can be told to ignore all but the most critical messages, or it can record every detail. The syslogd daemon can even accept messages from other computers on your network. This is particularly handy because it enables you to centralize the management and reviewing of the log files from many systems on your network. There is also a major security benefit to this practice. If a system on your network is broken into, the cracker cannot delete or modify the log files because those files are stored on a separate computer. It is important to remember, however, that those log messages are not, by default, encrypted. Anyone tapping into your local network can eavesdrop on those messages as they pass from one machine to another. Also, although the cracker may not be able to change old log entries, he can affect the system such that any new log messages should not be trusted. It is not uncommon to run a dedicated loghost, a computer that serves no other purpose than to record log messages from other computers on the network. Because this system runs no other services, it is unlikely that it will be broken into. This makes it nearly impossible for a cracker to erase his or her tracks, but it does not mean that all of the log entries are accurate after a cracker has broken into a machine on your network.

Redirecting Logs to a Loghost with syslogd To redirect your computer’s log files to another computer’s syslogd, you must make some changes to your local syslogd’s configuration file, /etc/syslog.conf. Become root using the su - command and then open the /etc/syslog.conf file in a text editor (such as vi). You should see something similar to this: # Log all kernel messages to the console. # Logging much else clutters up the screen. #kern.* /dev/console # Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher. # Don’t log private authentication messages! *.info;mail.none;news.none;authpriv.none;cron.none /var/log/messages # The authpriv file has restricted access. authpriv.* /var/log/secure # Log all the mail messages in one place. mail.* /var/log/maillog # Log cron stuff cron.*

/var/log/cron

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# Everybody gets emergency messages *.emerg

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*

# Save news errors of level crit and higher in a special file. uucp,news.crit /var/log/spooler # Save boot messages also to boot.log local7.*

/var/log/boot.log

# # INN # news.=crit news.=err news.notice

/var/log/news/news.crit /var/log/news/news.err /var/log/news/news.notice

The lines beginning with a # character are comments. Other lines contain two columns of information. The left field is a semicolon-separated list (spaces won’t work) of message types and message priorities. The right field is the log file to which those messages should be written. To send the messages to another computer (the loghost) instead of a file, start by replacing the log filename with the @ character followed by the name of the loghost. For example, to redirect the output normally sent to the messages, secure, and maillog log files, make these changes to the preceding file: # Log anything (except mail) of level info or higher. # Don’t log private authentication messages! *.info;mail.none;news.none;authpriv.none;cron.none @loghost # The authpriv file has restricted access. authpriv.* @loghost # Log all the mail messages in one place. mail.* @loghost

The messages will now be sent to the syslogd running on the computer named loghost. The name loghost was not an arbitrary choice. It is customary to create such a host name and make it an alias to the actual system acting as the loghost. That way, if you ever need to switch the loghost duties to a different machine, you need to change only the loghost alias; you do not need to re-edit the syslog.conf file on every computer. On the loghost side, that machine must run syslogd with the -r option, so it will listen on the network for log messages from other machines. In Fedora systems, that means adding a -r option to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS variable in the /etc/sysconfig/syslog file and restarting the syslog service (service syslog restart). The loghost must also have UDP port 514 accessible to be used by syslogd (check the /etc/services file), so you might need to add a firewall rule to allow that.

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Understanding the messages Log File Because of the many programs and services that record information to the messages log file, it is important that you understand the format of this file. You can get a good early warning of problems developing on your system by examining this file. Each line in the file is a single message recorded by some program or service. Here is a snippet of an actual messages log file: Feb 25 11:04:32 toys network: Bringing up loopback interface: succeeded Feb 25 11:04:35 toys network: Bringing up interface eth0: succeeded Feb 25 13:01:14 toys vsftpd(pam_unix)[10565]: authentication failure; logname= uid=0 euid=0 tty= ruser= rhost=10.0.0.5 user=chris Feb 25 14:44:24 toys su(pam_unix)[11439]: session opened for user root by chris(uid=500)

This is really very simple when you know what to look for. Each message is divided into five main parts. From left to right, they are: ■

The date and time that the message was logged

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The name of the computer from which the message came

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The program or service name to which the message pertains

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The process number (enclosed in square brackets) of the program sending the message

■

The actual text message

Take another look at the preceding file snippet. In the first two lines, you can see that the network was restarted. The next line shows that the user named chris tried and failed to get to the FTP server on this system from a computer at address 10.0.0.5 (he typed the wrong password and authentication failed). The last line shows chris using the su command to become root user. By occasionally reviewing the messages and secure files, it’s possible to catch a cracking attempt before it is successful. If you see an excessive number of connection attempts for a particular service, especially if they are coming from systems on the Internet, you may be under attack.

Using Secure Shell Tools The Secure Shell (SSH) tools are a set of client and server applications that allow you to do basic communications (remote login, remote copy, remote execution, and so on) between remote computers and your Linux system. Because communication is encrypted between the server (typically the sshd daemon process) and clients (such as ssh, scp, and sftp), these tools are inherently more secure than similar, older UNIX tools such as rsh, rcp, and rlogin. Most Linux systems include SSH clients, while many include the sshd server as well. If you are using the Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions, for example, the following client and server software packages include the SSH software: openssh, openssh-clients, and openssh-server packages.

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Starting the SSH Service Linux systems that come with the SSH service already installed often are configured for it to start automatically. In Fedora and RHEL systems, the sshd daemon is started from the /etc/init.d/ sshd startup script. To make sure the service is set up to start automatically in Fedora, RHEL, and other RPM-based Linux systems, type the following (as root user): # chkconfig — list sshd sshd 0:off 1:off

2:on

3:on

4:on

5:on

6:off

This shows that the sshd service is set to run in system states 2, 3, 4, and 5 (normal bootup states) and set to be off in all other states. You can turn on the SSH service if it is off for your default run state by typing the following as root user: # chkconfig sshd on

This line turns on the SSH service when you enter run level 2, 3, 4, or 5. To start the service immediately, type the following: # service sshd start

Other Linux distributions may simply start the sshd daemon from an entry in the /etc/rc.d directory from a file named something like rc.sshd. In any case, you can find out if the sshd daemon is currently running on your system by typing the following: $ ps ax | grep sshd 1996 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd

The preceding example shows that the sshd daemon is running. If that is the case, and your firewall allows the SSH service (with TCP port 22 open), you should be able to use SSH client commands to access your system. (Any further configuration you want to do to restrict what the sshd daemon will allow is typically done in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.)

Using the ssh, sftp, and scp Commands Three commands you can use with the SSH service are ssh, sftp, and scp. Remote users use the ssh command to log in to your system securely or remotely execute a command on your system. The scp command lets remote users copy files to and from a system. The sftp command provides a safe way to access FTP sites through the SSH service (for sites that offer SSH access to their FTP content). As with the normal remote shell services, SSH looks in the /etc/hosts.equiv file and in a user’s .rhost file to determine whether it should allow a connection. It also looks in the ssh-specific files /etc/shosts.equiv and .shosts. Using the shosts.equiv and the .shosts files is preferable because it avoids granting access to the unencrypted remote shell services. The /etc/shosts.equiv and .shosts files are functionally equivalent to the traditional hosts.equiv and .rhosts files, so the same instructions and rules apply.

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Now you are ready to test the SSH service. From another computer on which SSH has been installed (or even from the same computer if another is not available), type the ssh command followed by a space and the name of the system you are connecting to. For example, to connect to the system ratbert.glaci.com, type: # ssh ratbert.glaci.com

If this is the first time ever you have logged in to that system using the ssh command, the system will ask you to confirm that you really want to connect. Type yes and press Enter when it asks this: The authenticity of host ‘ratbert.glaci.com (199.170.177.18)’ can’t be established. RSA key fingerprint is xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx. Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

It should then prompt you for a username and password in the normal way. The connection will then function like a normal remote login connection (in other words, you can begin typing shell commands). The only difference is that the information is encrypted as it travels over the network. You should now also be able to use the ssh command to run remote commands from a shell on the remote system. The scp command is similar to the rcp command for copying files to and from Linux systems. Here is an example of using the scp command to copy a file called memo from the home directory of the user named jake to the /tmp directory on a computer called maple: $ scp /home/jake/memo maple:/tmp jake@maple’s password: ******** memo 100%|****************|

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Enter the password for your username (if a password is requested). If the password is accepted, the remote system indicates that the file has been copied successfully. Similarly, the sftp command starts an interactive FTP session with an FTP server that supports SSH connections. Many security-conscious people prefer sftp to other FTP clients because it provides a secure connection between you and the remote host. Here’s an example: $ sftp ftp.handsonhistory.com Connecting to ftp.handsonhistory.com [email protected]’s password: ******** sftp>

At this point you can begin an interactive FTP session. You can use get and put commands on files as you would using any FTP client, but with the comfort of knowing that you are working on a secure connection. The sftp command, as with ssh and scp, requires that the SSH service be running on the server. If you can’t connect to a FTP server using sftp, the SSH service may not be available.

TIP

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Using ssh, scp, and sftp without Passwords For machines that you use a great deal (particularly machines behind a firewall on your LAN), it is often helpful to set them up so that you do not have to use a password to log in. The following procedure shows you how to do that. These steps take you through setting up password-less authentication from one machine to another. In this example, the local user is named chester on a computer named host1. The remote user is also chester on a computer named host2. 1. Log in to the local computer (in this example, I log in as chester to host1).

NOTE

Run Step 2 only once as local user on your local workstation. Do not run it again unless you lose your ssh keys. When configuring subsequent remote servers, skip right to Step 3.

2. Type the following to generate the ssh key: $ ssh-keygen -t dsa Generating public/private dsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/home/chester/.ssh/id_dsa): <Enter> Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): <Enter> Enter same passphrase again: <Enter> Your identification has been saved in /home/chester/.ssh/id_dsa. Your public key has been saved in /home/chester/.ssh/id_dsa.pub. The key fingerprint is: 3b:c0:2f:63:a5:65:70:b7:4b:f0:2a:c4:18:24:47:69 chester@host1

As shown in the example, press Enter to accept the filename where the key is stored. Then press Enter twice to accept a blank passphrase. (If you enter a passphrase, you will be prompted for that passphrase and won’t be able to login without it.) 3. You must secure the permissions of your authentication keys by closing permissions to your home directory, .ssh directory, and authentication files as follows: $ chmod go-w $HOME $ chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh $ chmod go-rwx $HOME/.ssh/*

4. Type the following to copy the key to the remote server (replace chester with the remote username and host2 with the remote host name): $ cd ~/.ssh $ scp id_dsa.pub chester@host2:/tmp chester@host2’s password: *******

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5. Type the following to add the ssh key to the remote user’s authorization keys (the code should be on one line, not wrapped): $ ssh chester@host2 ‘cat /tmp/id_dsa.pub >> /home/chester/.ssh/authorized_keys2’

NOTE

In the previous two steps you are asked for passwords. This is okay.

For the sshd daemon to accept the authorized_keys2 file you created, your home directories and that file itself must have secure permissions. To secure that file and those directories, type the following: $ ssh chester@host2 chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh $ ssh chester@host2 chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys2

6. Type the following to remove the key from the temporary directory: $ ssh chester@host2 rm /tmp/id_dsa.pub

NOTE

You should not be asked for a password or passphrase in the previous step.

It is important to note that once you have this working, it will work regardless of how many times the IP address changes on your local computer. The IP address has nothing to do with this form of authentication.

Securing Linux Servers Opening up your Linux system as a server on a public network creates a whole new set of challenges when it comes to security. Instead of just turning away nearly all incoming requests, your computer will be expected to respond to requests for supported services (such as Web, FTP, or mail service) by supplying information or possibly running scripts that take in data. Entire books have been filled with information on how to go about securing your servers. Many businesses that rely on Internet servers assign full-time administrators to watch over the security of their servers. So, think of this section as an overview of some of the kinds of attacks to look out for and some tools available to secure your Linux server.

Controlling Access to Services with TCP Wrappers Completely disabling an unused service is fine, but what about the services that you really need? How can you selectively grant and deny access to these services? For Linux systems that incorporate TCP

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wrapper support, the /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny files determine when a particular connection should be granted or refused for services such as rlogin, rsh, telnet, finger, and talk. Most Linux systems that implement TCP wrappers do so for a set of services that are monitored by a single listening process called the Internet super server. For Fedora and RHEL systems, that server is the xinetd daemon, while in other systems (such as Debian) the inetd daemon is used. When a service that relies on TCP wrappers is requested from the server process, the hosts.allow and hosts.deny files are scanned and checked for an entry that matches the IP address of the connecting machine. These checks are made when connection attempts occur: ■

If the address is listed in the hosts.allow file, the connection is allowed and hosts.deny is not checked.

■

If the address is in hosts.deny, the connection is denied.

■

If the address is in neither file, the connection is allowed.

Keep in mind that the order in which hosts are evaluated is important. For example, you cannot deny access to a host in the hosts.deny file that has already been given access in the hosts.allow file. It is not necessary (or even possible) to list every single address that may try to connect to your computer. The hosts.allow and hosts.deny files enable you to specify entire subnets and groups of addresses. You can even use the keyword ALL to specify all possible addresses. You can also restrict specific entries in these files so they apply only to specific network services. Look at an example of a typical pair of hosts.allow and hosts.deny files. Here’s the /etc/hosts.allow file: # # hosts.allow This file describes the names of the hosts are # allowed to use the local INET services, as decided # by the ‘/usr/sbin/tcpd’ server. # cups-lpd: 199.170.177. in.telnetd: 199.170.177., .linuxtoys.net vsftpd: ALL

Here’s the /etc/hosts.deny file: # # hosts.deny This file describes names of the hosts which are # *not* allowed to use the local INET services, as # decided by the ‘/usr/sbin/tcpd’ server. # ALL: ALL

The preceding example is a rather restrictive configuration. It allows connections to the cups-lpd and telnet services from certain hosts, but then denies all other connections. It also allows connections to the FTP service (vsftp) to all hosts. Let’s examine the files in detail.

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As usual, lines beginning with a # character are comments and are ignored by xinetd or inetd when it parses the file. Each noncomment line consists of a comma-separated list of daemons followed by a colon (:) character and then a comma-separated list of client addresses to check. In this context, a client is any computer that attempts to access a network service on your system. A client entry can be a numeric IP address (such as 199.170.177.25) or a host name (such as jukebox.linuxtoys.net), but it is more often a wildcard variation that specifies an entire range of addresses. A client entry can take four different forms. The online manual page for the hosts .allow file describes them as follows: ■

A string that begins with a dot (.) character. A host name is matched if the last components of its name match the specified pattern. For example, the pattern .tue.nl matches the host name wzv.win.tue.nl.

■

A string that ends with a dot (.) character. A host address is matched if its first numeric fields match the given string. For example, the pattern 131.155. matches the address of (almost) every host on the Eindhoven University network (131.155.x.x).

■

A string that begins with an at (@) sign is treated as an NIS netgroup name. A host name is matched if it is a host member of the specified netgroup. Netgroup matches are not supported for daemon process names or for client user names.

■

An expression of the form n.n.n.n/m.m.m.m is interpreted as a net/mask pair. A host address is matched if net is equal to the bitwise and of the address and the mask. For example, the net/mask pattern 131.155.72.0/255.255.254.0 matches every address in the range 131.155.72.0 through 131.155.73.255.

The example host.allow contains the first two types of client specification. The entry 199.170.177. will match any IP address that begins with that string, such as 199.170.177.25. The client entry .linuxtoys.net will match host names such as jukebox.linuxtoys.net and picframe .linuxtoys.net. Let’s examine what happens when a host named jukebox.linuxtoys.net (with IP address 199.170.179.18) connects to your Linux system using the Telnet protocol. In this case, the Linux system is Fedora, which uses the xinetd daemon to listen for service requests associated with TCP wrappers: 1. xinetd receives the connection request. 2. xinetd begins comparing the address and name of jukebox.linuxtoys.net to the rules listed in /etc/hosts.allow. It starts at the top of the file and works its way down the file until it finds a match. Both the daemon (the program handling the network service on your Fedora box) and the connecting client’s IP address or name must match the information in the hosts.allow file. In this case, the second rule that is encountered matches the request: in.telnetd: 199.170.177., .linuxtoys.net

3. The jukebox host is not in the 199.170.177 subnet, but it is in the linuxtoys.net domain. xinetd stops searching the file as soon as it finds this match.

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How about if jukebox connects to your box using the CUPS-lpd protocol? In this case, it matches none of the rules in hosts.allow; the only line that refers to the lpd daemon does not refer to the 199.170.179 subnet or to the linuxtoys.net domain. xinetd continues on to the hosts.deny file. The entry ALL: ALL matches anything, so tcpd denies the connection. The ALL wildcard was also used in the hosts.allow file. In this case, you are telling xinetd to permit absolutely any host to connect to the FTP service on the Linux box. This is appropriate for running an anonymous FTP server that anyone on the Internet can access. If you are not running an anonymous FTP site, you probably should not use the ALL flag. A good rule of thumb is to make your hosts.allow and hosts.deny files as restrictive as possible and then explicitly enable only those services that you really need. Also, grant access only to those systems that really need access. Using the ALL flag to grant universal access to a particular service may be easier than typing a long list of subnets or domains, but better a few minutes spent on proper security measures than many hours recovering from a break-in. For Linux systems that use the xinetd service, you can further restrict access to services using various options within the /etc/xinetd.conf file, even to the point of limiting access to certain services to specific times of the day. Read the manual page for xinetd (by typing man xinetd at a command prompt) to learn more about these options.

TIP

Understanding Attack Techniques Attacks on computing systems take on different forms, depending on the goal and resources of the attacker. Some attackers want to be disruptive, while others want to infiltrate your machines and utilize the resources for their own nefarious purposes. Still others are targeting your data for financial gain or blackmail. Here are three major categories of attacks: ■

Denial of Service (DoS) — The easiest attacks to perpetrate are Denial of Service attacks. The primary purpose of these attacks is to disrupt the activities of a remote site by overloading it with irrelevant data. DoS attacks can be as simple as sending thousands of page requests per second at a Web site. These types of attacks are easy to perpetrate and easy to protect against. Once you have a handle on where the attack is coming from, a simple phone call to the perpetrator’s ISP will get the problem solved.

■

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) — More advanced DoS attacks are called distributed denial-of-service attacks. DDoS attacks are much harder to perpetrate and nearly impossible to stop. In this form of attack, an attacker takes control of hundreds or even thousands of weakly secured Internet connected computers. The attacker then directs them in unison to send a stream of irrelevant data to a single Internet host. The result is that the power of one attacker is magnified thousands of times. Instead of an attack coming from one direction, as is the case in a normal DoS, it comes from thousands of directions at once. The best defense against a DDoS attack is to contact your ISP to see if it can filter traffic at its border routers. Many people use the excuse, “I have nothing on my machine anyone would want” to avoid having to consider security. The problem with this argument is that attackers have a lot of reasons to use your machine. The attacker can turn your machine into an agent for later use in a DDoS attack. More than once, authorities have shown up at the door of a dumbfounded

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computer user asking questions about threats originating from their computer. By ignoring security, the owners have opened themselves up to a great deal of liability. ■

Intrusion attacks — To remotely use the resources of a target machine, attackers must first look for an opening to exploit. In the absence of inside information such as passwords or encryption keys, they must scan the target machine to see what services are offered. Perhaps one of the services is weakly secured and the attacker can use some known exploit to finagle his or her way in. A tool called nmap is generally considered the best way to scan a host for services (note that nmap is a tool that can be used for good and evil). Once the attacker has a list of the available services running on his target, he or she needs to find a way to trick one of those services into letting him or her have privileged access to the system. Usually, this is done with a program called an exploit.

While DoS attacks are disruptive, intrusion attacks are the most damaging. The reasons are varied, but the result is always the same. An uninvited guest is now taking up residence on your machine and is using it in a way you have no control over.

Protecting Against Denial-of-Service Attacks As explained earlier, a denial-of-service attack attempts to crash your computer or at least degrade its performance to an unusable level. There are a variety of denial-of-service exploits. Most try to overload some system resource, such as your available disk space or your Internet connection. Some common attacks and defenses are discussed in the following sections.

Mailbombing Mailbombing is the practice of sending so much e-mail to a particular user or system that the computer’s hard drive becomes full. There are several ways to protect yourself from mailbombing, as described in the following sections. You can use the Procmail e-mail-filtering tool or, if you are using sendmail as your mail transport agent, configure your sendmail daemon.

Blocking Mail with Procmail The Procmail e-mail–filtering tool, installed by default with Fedora, RHEL, and many other Linux systems, is tightly integrated with the sendmail e-mail daemon; thus, it can be used to selectively block or filter out specific types of e-mail. You can learn more about Procmail at the Procmail Web site: www.procmail.org. To enable Procmail for your user account, create a .procmailrc file in your home directory. The file should be mode 0600 (readable by you but nobody else). Type the following, replacing evilmailer with the actual e-mail address that is mailbombing you: # Delete mail from evilmailer :0 * ^From.*evilmailer /dev/null

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The Procmail recipe looks for the From line at the start of each e-mail to see if it includes the string evilmailer. If it does, the message is sent to /dev/null (effectively throwing it away).

Blocking Mail with sendmail The Procmail e-mail tool works quite well when only one user is being mailbombed. If, however, the mailbombing affects many users, you should probably configure your sendmail daemon to block all e-mail from the mailbomber. Do this by adding the mailbomber’s e-mail address or system name to the access file located in the /etc/mail directory. Each line of the access file contains an e-mail address, host name, domain, or IP address followed by a tab and then a keyword specifying what action to take when that entity sends you a message. Valid keywords are OK, RELAY, REJECT, DISCARD, and ERROR. Using the REJECT keyword will cause a sender’s e-mail to be bounced back with an error message. The keyword DISCARD will cause the message to be silently dropped without sending an error back. You can even return a custom error message by using the ERROR keyword. Thus, an example /etc/mail/access file may look similar to this: # Check the /usr/share/doc/sendmail/README.cf file for a description # of the format of this file. (search for access_db in that file) # The /usr/share/doc/sendmail/README.cf is part of the sendmail-doc # package. # # by default we allow relaying from localhost... localhost.localdomain RELAY localhost RELAY 127.0.0.1 RELAY # # Senders we want to Block # [email protected] REJECT stimpy.glaci.com REJECT cyberpromo.com DISCARD 199.170.176.99 ERROR:”550 Die Spammer Scum!” 199.170.177 ERROR:”550 Email Refused”

As with most Linux configuration files, lines that begin with a pound (#) sign are comments. The list of blocked spammers is at the end of this example file. Note that the address to block can be a complete e-mail address, a full host name, a domain only, an IP address, or a subnet. To block a particular e-mail address or host from mailbombing you, log in to your system as root, edit the /etc/mail/access file, and add a line to DISCARD mail from the offending sender. After saving the file and exiting the editor, you must convert the access file into a hash-indexed database called access.db. The database is updated automatically the next time sendmail starts. On Fedora and other Red Hat systems, you can convert the database immediately, as follows: # cd /etc/mail # make

Sendmail should now discard e-mail from the addresses you added.

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Spam Relaying Your e-mail services can also be abused by having your system used as a spam relay. Spam refers to the unsolicited junk e-mail that has become a common occurrence on the Internet. Relay refers to the mail server feature that causes it to send mail it receives to another server. (Normally, only users with valid e-mail accounts on the server are allowed to use a mail server to relay messages on their behalf. A mail server configured as an open relay will allow anyone to forward e-mail messages through it and is, therefore, considered to be a very bad practice.) Spammers often deliver their annoying messages from a normal dial-up Internet account. They need some kind of high-capacity e-mail server to accept and buffer the payload of messages. They deliver the spam to the server all in one huge batch and then log off, letting the server do the work of delivering the messages to the many victims. Naturally, no self-respecting Internet service provider will cooperate with this action, so spammers resort to hijacking servers at another ISP to do the dirty work. Having your mailserver hijacked to act as a spam relay can have a devastating effect on your system and your reputation. Fortunately, open mail relaying is deactivated by default on Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux installations. Open mail relaying is one security issue that you will not have to worry about. You can allow specific hosts or domains to relay mail through your system by adding those senders to your /etc/mail/access file with keyword RELAY. By default, relaying is allowed from the local host only.

TIP

One package you might consider using to filter out spam on your mail server is SpamAssassin. SpamAssassin examines the text of incoming mail messages and attempts to filter out messages that are determined to be spam. SpamAssassin is described in Chapter 14.

Smurf Amplification Attack Smurfing refers to a particular type of denial-of-service attack aimed at flooding your Internet connection. It can be a difficult attack to defend against because it is not easy to trace the attack to the attacker. Here is how smurfing works. The attack makes use of the ICMP protocol, a service intended for checking the speed and availability of network connections. Using the ping command, you can send a network packet from your computer to another computer on the Internet. The remote computer will recognize the packet as an ICMP request and echo a reply packet to your computer. Your computer can then print a message revealing that the remote system is up and telling you how long it took to reply to the ping. A smurfing attack uses a malformed ICMP request to bury your computer in network traffic. The attacker does this by bouncing a ping request off an unwitting third party in such a way that the reply is duplicated dozens or even hundreds of times. An organization with a fast Internet connection and a large number of computers is used as the relay. The destination address of the ping is set to an entire subnet instead of a single host. The return address is forged to be your machine’s address instead of the actual sender. When the ICMP packet arrives at the unwitting relay’s network, every host on that subnet replies to the ping! Furthermore, they reply to your computer instead of to

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the actual sender. If the relay’s network has hundreds of computers, your Internet connection can be quickly flooded. The best fix is to contact the organization being used as a relay and inform it of the abuse. Usually, they need only to reconfigure their Internet router to stop any future attacks. If the organization is uncooperative, you can minimize the effect of the attack by blocking the ICMP protocol on your router. This will at least keep the traffic off your internal network. If you can convince your ISP to block ICMP packets aimed at your network, it will help even more. (Note that there is some debate about whether or not blocking ICMP packets is a good idea because ICMP services can be useful for various administrative purposes.)

Protecting Against Distributed DoS Attacks DDoS attacks are much harder to initiate and extremely difficult to stop. A DDoS attack begins with the penetration of hundreds or even thousands of weakly secured machines. These machines can then be directed to attack a single host based on the whims of the attacker. With the advent of DSL and cable modems, millions of people are enjoying Internet access with virtually no speed restrictions. In their rush to get online, many of those people neglect even the most basic security. Because the vast majority of these people run Microsoft operating systems, they tend to get hit with worms and viruses rather quickly. After the machine has been infiltrated, quite often the worm or virus installs a program on the victim’s machine that instructs it to quietly call home and announce that it is now ready to do the master’s bidding. At the whim of the master, the infected machines can now be used to focus a concentrated stream of garbage data at a selected host. In concert with thousands of other infected machines, a script kiddie now has the power to take down nearly any site on the Internet. Detecting a DDoS is similar to detecting a DoS attack. One or more of the following signs are likely to be present: ■

Sustained saturated data link

■

No reduction in link saturation during off-peak hours

■

Hundreds or even thousands of simultaneous network connections

■

Extremely slow system performance

To determine if your data link is saturated, the act of pinging an outside host can tell much of the story. Much higher than usual latency is a dead giveaway. Normal ping latency (that is, the time it takes for a ping response to come back from a remote host) looks like the following: # ping www.example.com PING www.example.com (192.0.34.166) from 10.0.0.11: 56(84) bytes of data 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=40.1 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=42.5 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=39.5 ms

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64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=38.4 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=5 ttl=49 time=39.0 ms --- www.example.com ping statistics --5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% loss, time 4035ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 38.472/39.971/42.584/1.432 ms

In the preceding example, the average time for a ping packet to make the roundtrip was about 39 thousandths of a second. A ping to a nearly saturated link looks like the following: # ping www.example.com PING www.example.com (192.0.34.166): from 10.0.0.11: 56(84)bytes of data 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=1 ttl=62 time=1252 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=2 ttl=62 time=1218 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=3 ttl=62 time=1290 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=4 ttl=62 time=1288 ms 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=5 ttl=62 time=1241 ms --- www.example.com ping statistics --5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% loss, time 5032ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1218.059/1258.384/1290.861/28.000 ms

In this example, a ping packet took, on average, 1.3 seconds to make the roundtrip. From the first example to the second example, latency increased by a factor of 31! A data link that goes from working normally to slowing down by a factor of 31 is a clear sign that link utilization should be investigated. For a more accurate measure of data throughput, you can use a tool such as ttcp. To test your connection with ttcp you must have installed the ttcp package on machines inside and outside of your network. (The ttcp package is available with Fedora and other Linux systems.) If you are not sure whether the package is installed, simply type ttcp at a command prompt. You should see something like the following: # ttcp Usage: ttcp -t [-options] host [ < in ] ttcp -r [-options > out] Common options: -l ## length of bufs read from or written to network (default 8192) -u use UDP instead of TCP -p ## port number to send to or listen at (default 5001) -s -t: source a pattern to network -r: sink (discard) all data from network -A align the start of buffers to this modulus (default 16384) -O start buffers at this offset from the modulus (default 0) -v verbose: print more statistics -d set SO_DEBUG socket option -b ## set socket buffer size (if supported)

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-f X format for rate: k,K = kilo{bit,byte}; m,M = mega; g,G = giga Options specific to -t: -n## number of source bufs written to network (default 2048) -D don’t buffer TCP writes (sets TCP_NODELAY socket option) -w ## number of microseconds to wait between each write Options specific to -r: -B for -s, only output full blocks as specified by -l (for TAR) -T “touch”: access each byte as it’s read -I if Specify the network interface (e.g. eth0) to use

The first step is to start up a receiver process on the server machine: # ttcp -rs ttcp-r: buflen=8192, nbuf=2048, align=16384/0, port=5001 ttcp-r: socket

tcp

The -r flag denotes that the server machine will be the receiver. The –s flag, in conjunction with the –r flag, tells ttcp that you want to ignore any received data. The next step is to have someone outside of your data link, with a network link close to the same speed as yours, set up a ttcp sending process: # ttcp -ts server.example.com ttcp-t: buflen=8192, nbuf=2048, align=16384/0, port=5001 -> server.example.com ttcp-t: socket ttcp-t: connect

tcp

Let the process run for a few minutes and then press Ctrl+C on the transmitting side to stop the testing. The receiving side then takes a moment to calculate and present the results: # ttcp -rs ttcp-r: buflen=8192, nbuf=2048, align=16384/0, port=5001 tcp ttcp-r: socket ttcp-r: accept from 64.223.17.21 ttcp-r: 2102496 bytes in 70.02 real seconds = 29.32 KB/sec +++ ttcp-r: 1226 I/O calls, msec/call = 58.49, calls/sec = 17.51 ttcp-r: 0.0user 0.0sys 1:10real 0% 0i+0d 0maxrss 0+2pf 0+0csw

In this example, the average bandwidth between the two hosts was 29.32 kilobytes per second. On a link suffering from a DDoS, this number would be a mere fraction of the actual bandwidth the data link is rated for. If the data link is indeed saturated, the next step is to determine where the connections are coming from. A very effective way of doing this is with the netstat command, which is included as part of the base Fedora installation. Type the following to see connection information: # netstat –tupn

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Table 12-3 describes each of the netstat parameters used here.

TABLE 12-3

netstat Parameters Parameter

Description

-t, --tcp

Show TCP socket connections.

-u, --udp

Show UDP socket connections.

-p, --program

Show the PID and name of the program to which each socket belongs.

-n, --numeric

Show the numerical address instead of trying to determine the symbolic host, port, or usernames.

The following is an example of what the output might look like: Active Internet connections (w/o servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:22 13.29.132.19:12545 tcp 0 224 65.213.7.96:22 13.29.210.13:29250 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:6667 13.29.194.190:33452 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:6667 216.39.144.152:42709 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:42352 67.113.1.99:53 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:42354 83.152.6.9:113 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:42351 83.152.6.9:113 tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:42355 127.0.0.1:783 tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:783 127.0.0.1:42353 tcp 0 0 65.213.7.96:736758 19.15.11.1:25

State PID/Program name ESTABLISHED 32376/sshd ESTABLISHED 13858/sshd ESTABLISHED 1870/ircd ESTABLISHED 1870/ircd TIME_WAIT TIME_WAIT TIME_WAIT TIME_WAIT TIME_WAIT TIME_WAIT -

The output is organized into columns defined as follows: ■

Proto — Protocol used by the socket.

■

Recv-Q — The number of bytes not yet copied by the user program attached to this socket.

■

Send-Q — The number of bytes not acknowledged by the host.

■

Local Address — Address and port number of the local end of the socket.

■

Foreign Address — Address and port number of the remote end of the socket.

■

State — Current state of the socket. Table 12-4 provides a list of socket states.

■

PID/Program name — Process ID and program name of the process that owns the socket.

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TABLE 12-4

Socket States State

Description

ESTABLISHED

Socket has an established connection.

SYN_SENT

Socket actively trying to establish a connection.

SYN_RECV

Connection request received from the network.

FIN_WAIT1

Socket closed and shutting down.

FIN_WAIT2

Socket is waiting for remote end to shut down.

TIME_WAIT

Socket is waiting after closing to handle packets still in the network.

CLOSED

Socket is not being used.

CLOSE_WAIT

The remote end has shut down, waiting for the socket to close.

LAST_ACK

The remote end has shut down, and the socket is closed, waiting for acknowledgement.

LISTEN

Socket is waiting for an incoming connection.

CLOSING

Both sides of the connection are shut down, but not all of your data has been sent.

UNKNOWN

The state of the socket is unknown.

During a DoS attack, the foreign address is usually the same for each connection. In this case, it is a simple matter of typing the foreign IP address into the search form at www.arin.net/whois/ so you can alert your ISP. During a DDoS attack, the foreign address will likely be different for each connection. In this case, it is impossible to track down all of the offenders because there will likely be thousands of them. The best way to defend yourself is to contact your ISP and see if it can filter the traffic at its border routers.

Protecting Against Intrusion Attacks Crackers have a wide variety of tools and techniques to assist them in breaking into your computer. Intrusion attacks focus on exploiting weaknesses in your security, so the crackers can take more control of your system (and potentially do more damage) than they could from the outside. Fortunately, there are many tools and techniques for combating intrusion attacks. This section discusses the most common break-in methods and the tools available to protect your system. Although the examples shown are specific to Fedora and other Red Hat Linux systems, the tools and techniques are generally applicable to any Linux or UNIX-like operating system.

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Evaluating Access to Network Services Linux systems and their UNIX kin provide many network services, and with them many avenues for cracker attacks. You should know these services and how to limit access to them. What do I mean by a network service? Basically, I am referring to any task that the computer performs that requires it to send and receive information over the network using some predefined set of rules. Routing e-mail is a network service. So is serving Web pages. Your Linux box has the potential to provide thousands of services. Many of them are listed in the /etc/services file. Look at a snippet of that file: # /etc/services: # service-name port/protocol [aliases ...] [# comment] chargen 19/tcp ttytst source chargen 19/udp ttytst source ftp-data 20/tcp ftp-data 20/udp # 21 is registered to ftp, but also used by fsp ftp 21/tcp ftp 21/udp fsp fspd ssh 22/tcp # SSH Remote Login Protocol ssh 22/udp # SSH Remote Login Protocol telnet 23/tcp telnet 23/udp # 24 - private mail system smtp 25/tcp mail

After the comment lines, you will notice three columns of information. The left column contains the name of each service. The middle column defines the port number and protocol type used for that service. The rightmost field contains an optional alias or list of aliases for the service. As an example, examine the last entry in the file snippet. It describes the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) service, which is the service used for delivering e-mail over the Internet. The middle column contains the text 25/tcp, which tells you that the SMTP protocol uses port 25 and uses the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as its protocol type. What exactly is a port number? It is a unique number that has been set aside for a particular network service. It allows network connections to be properly routed to the software that handles that service. For example, when an e-mail message is delivered from some other computer to your Linux box, the remote system must first establish a network connection with your system. Your computer receives the connection request, examines it, sees it labeled for port 25, and thus knows that the connection should be handed to the program that handles e-mail (which happens to be sendmail). I mentioned that SMTP uses TCP. Some services use UDP, the User Datagram Protocol. All you really need to know about TCP and UDP (for the purposes of this security discussion) is that they provide different ways of packaging the information sent over a network connection. A TCP connection provides error detection and retransmission of lost data. UDP doesn’t check to ensure that the data arrived complete and intact; it is meant as a fast way to send noncritical information.

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Disabling Network Services Although there are hundreds of services (with official port numbers listed in /etc/services) that potentially could be available and subject to attack on your Linux system, in reality only a few dozen services are installed and only a handful of those are on by default. In Fedora and RHEL systems, most network services are started by either the xinetd process or by a startup script in the /etc/ init.d directory. Other Linux systems use the inetd process instead of xinetd. xinetd and inetd are daemons that listen on a great number of network port numbers. When a connection is made to a particular port number, xinetd or inetd automatically starts the appropriate program for that service and hands the connection to it. For xinetd, the configuration file /etc/xinetd.conf is used to provide default settings for the xinetd server. The directory /etc/xinetd.d contains files telling xinetd what ports to listen on and what programs to start (the inetd daemon, alternatively, uses only the /etc/inetd.conf file). Each file in /etc/xinetd.d contains configuration information for a single service, and the file is usually named after the service it configures. For example, to enable the rsync service, edit the rsync file in the /etc/xinetd.d directory and look for a section similar to the following: service rsync { disable = yes socket_type wait user server server_args log_on_failure }

= stream = no = root = /usr/bin/rsync = --daemon += USERID

Note that the first line of this example identifies the service as rsync. This exactly matches the service name listed in the /etc/services file, causing the service to listen on port 873 for TCP and UDP. You can see that the service is off by default (disable = yes). To enable the rsync services, change the line to read disable = no instead. Thus, the disable line from the preceding example would look like this: disable = no The rsync service is a nice one to turn on if your machine is an FTP server. It allows people to use an rsync client (which includes a checksum-search algorithm) to download files from your server. With that feature, users can restart a disrupted download without having to start from the beginning.

TIP

Because most services are disabled by default, your computer is only as insecure as you make it. You can double-check that insecure services, such as rlogin and rsh (which are included in the rsh-server package in Fedora and RHEL systems), are also disabled by making sure that disabled = yes is set in the /etc/xinetd.d/rlogin and rsh files.

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You can make the remote login service active but disable the use of the /etc/host .equiv and .rhosts files, requiring rlogin to always prompt for a password. Rather than disabling the service, locate the server line in the rsh file (server = /usr/sbin/in.rshd) and add a space followed by -L at the end.

TIP

You now need to send a signal to the xinetd process to tell it to reload its configuration file. The quickest way to do that in Fedora and RHEL systems is to reload the xinetd service. As the root user, type the following from a shell: # service xinetd reload Reloading configuration:

[ OK ]

You can also tell the xinetd process directly to reread the configuration file by sending it a SIGHUP signal. That works if you are using the inetd daemon instead (on systems such as Debian or Slackware) to reread the /etc/inetd.conf file. For example, type this (as root user) to have the inetd daemon reread the configuration file: # killall -s SIGHUP inetd

That’s it — you have enabled the rsync service. Provided that you have properly configured your FTP server, clients should now be able to download files from your computer via the rsync protocol.

Securing Servers with SELinux Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a project developed primarily by the National Security Agency to produce highly secure Linux systems. Although SELinux is available as add-on packages to Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Yellow Dog, SELinux is installed and turned on by default in Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Red Hat, Inc. did a clever thing when it took its first swipe at implementing SELinux in Red Hat systems. Instead of creating policies to control every aspect of your Linux system, it created a “targeted” policy type that focused on securing those services that are most vulnerable to attacks. The company then set about securing those services in such a way that, if they were compromised, a cracker couldn’t compromise the rest of the system as well. Once you have opened a port in your firewall so others can request a service, then started that service to handle requests, SELinux can be used to set up walls around that service. As a result, its daemon process, configuration files, and data can’t access resources they are not specifically allowed to access. The rest of your computer, then, is safer. As Red Hat continues to work out the kinks in SELinux, there has been a tendency for users to see SELinux failures and just disable the entire SELinux service. However, a better course is to find out if SELinux is really stopping you from doing something that is unsafe. If it turns out to be a bug with SELinux, file a bug report and help make the service better. If you are enabling FTP, Web (HTTPD), DNS, NFS, NIS, or Samba services on your Fedora or RHEL system, you should consider leaving SELinux enabled and working with the settings from the

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Security Level Configuration window to configure those services. For information on SELinux that is specific to Fedora, refer to this site: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux

Protecting Web Servers with Certificates and Encryption Previous sections told you how to lock the doors to your Linux system to deny access to crackers. The best dead bolt lock, however, is useless if you are mugged in your own driveway and have your keys stolen. Likewise, the best computer security can be for naught if you are sending passwords and other critical data unprotected across the Internet.

Exporting Encryption Technology

B

efore describing how to use the various encryption tools, I need to warn you about an unusual policy of the United States government. For many years, the United States government treated encryption technology like munitions. As a result, anyone wanting to export encryption technology had to get an export license from the Commerce Department. This applied not only to encryption software developed within the United States, but also to software obtained from other countries and then re-exported to another country (or even to the same country you got it from). Thus, if you installed encryption technology on your Linux system and then transported it out of the country, you were violating federal law! Furthermore, if you e-mailed encryption software to a friend in another country or let him or her download it from your server, you violated the law. In January 2000, U.S. export laws relating to encryption software were relaxed considerably. However, often the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Export Administration requires a review of encryption products before they can be exported. U.S. companies are also still not allowed to export encryption technology to countries classified as supporting terrorism.

A savvy cracker can use a tool called a protocol analyzer or a network sniffer to peek at the data flowing across a network and pick out passwords, credit card data, and other juicy bits of information. The cracker does this by breaking into a poorly protected system on the same network and running software, or by gaining physical access to the same network and plugging in his or her own equipment. You can combat this sort of theft by using encryption. The two main types of encryption in use today are symmetric cryptography and public-key cryptography.

Symmetric Cryptography Symmetric cryptography, also called private-key cryptography, uses a single key to both encrypt and decrypt a message. This method is generally inappropriate for securing data that will be used by a

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third party because of the complexity of secure key exchange. Symmetric cryptography is generally useful for encrypting data for one’s own purposes. A classic use of symmetric cryptography is for a personal password vault. Anyone who has been using the Internet for any amount of time has accumulated a quantity of usernames and passwords for accessing various sites and resources. A personal password vault lets you store this access information in an encrypted form. The end result is that you have to remember only one password to unlock all of your access information. Until recently, the United States government was standardized on a symmetric encryption algorithm called DES (Data Encryption Standard) to secure important information. Because there is no direct way to crack DES-encrypted data, to decrypt DES-encrypted data without a password, you would have to use an unimaginable amount of computing power to try to guess the password. This is also known as the brute force method of decryption. As personal computing power has increased nearly exponentially, the DES algorithm has had to be retired. In its place, after a very long and interesting search, the United States government has accepted the Rijndael algorithm as what it calls the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard). Although the AES algorithm is also subject to brute force attacks, it requires significantly more computing power to crack than the DES algorithm does. For more information on AES, including a command-line implementation of the algorithm, you can visit http://aescrypt.sourceforge.net/.

Asymmetric Cryptography Public-key cryptography does not suffer from key distribution problems, and that is why it is the preferred encryption method for secure Internet communication. This method uses two keys, one to encrypt the message and another to decrypt the message. The key used to encrypt the message is called the public key because it is made available for all to see. The key used to decrypt the message is the private key and is kept hidden. Imagine that you want to send me a secure message using public-key encryption. Here is what we need: 1. I must have a public and private key pair. Depending on the circumstances, I may generate the keys myself (using special software) or obtain the keys from a key authority. 2. You want to send me a message, so you first look up my public key (or more accurately, the software you are using looks it up). 3. You encrypt the message with the public key. At this point, the message can be decrypted only with the private key (the public key cannot be used to decrypt the message). 4. I receive the message and use my private key to decrypt it.

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Secure Sockets Layer A classic implementation of public-key cryptography is with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communication. This is the technology that enables you to securely submit your credit card information to an online merchant. The elements of an SSL-encrypted session are as follows: ■

SSL-enabled Web browser (Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Opera, Konquerer, and so on)

■

SSL-enabled Web server (Apache)

■

SSL certificate

To initiate an SSL session, a Web browser first makes contact with a Web server on port 443, also known as the HTTPS (Hypertext Transport Protocol Secure) port. After a socket connection has been established between the two machines, the following occurs: 1. The server sends its SSL certificate to the browser. 2. The browser verifies the identity of the server through the SSL certificate. 3. The browser generates a symmetric encryption key. 4. The browser uses the SSL certificate to encrypt the symmetric encryption key. 5. The browser sends the encrypted key to the server. 6. The server decrypts the symmetric key with its private key counterpart of the public SSL certificate.

The browser and server can now encrypt and decrypt traffic based on a common knowledge of the symmetric key. Secure data interchange can now occur.

Creating SSL Certificates To create your own SSL certificate for secure HTTP data interchange, you must first have an SSL-capable Web server. The Apache Web server, which comes with Fedora and other Linux systems is SSL-capable. The following procedure for creating SSL certificates is done on a Fedora system that includes Apache from the httpd package. This procedure may be different for Apache on other Linux systems. Once you have a server ready to go, you should familiarize yourself with the important server-side components of an SSL certificate: # ls -l /etc/httpd/conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root drwx-----drwx-----drwx-----drwx-----drwx------

2 2 2 2 2

root root root root root

root root root root root

36010 Jul 14 15:45 httpd.conf 37 Aug 12 23:45 Makefile -> ../../../usr/share/ssl/certs/Makefile 4096 Aug 12 23:45 ssl.crl 4096 Aug 12 23:45 ssl.crt 4096 Jul 14 15:45 ssl.csr 4096 Aug 12 23:45 ssl.key 4096 Jul 14 15:45 ssl.prm

# ls -l /etc/httpd/conf.d/ssl.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 11140 Jul 14 15:45 ssl.conf

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The /etc/httpd/conf and /etc/httpd/conf.d directories contain all of the components necessary to create your SSL certificate. Each component is defined as follows: ■

httpd.conf — Web server configuration file

■

Makefile — Certificate building script

■

ssl.crl — Certificate revocation list directory

■

ssl.crt — SSL certificate directory

■

ssl.csr — Certificate service request directory

■

ssl.key — SSL certificate private key directory

■

ssl.prm — SSL certificate parameters

■

ssl.conf — Primary Web server SSL configuration file

Now that you’re familiar with the basic components, take a look at the tools used to create SSL certificates: # cd /etc/httpd/conf # make This makefile allows you to create: o public/private key pairs o SSL certificate signing requests (CSRs) o self-signed SSL test certificates To To To To

create create create create

a a a a

key pair, run “make SOMETHING.key”. CSR, run “make SOMETHING.csr”. test certificate, run “make SOMETHING.crt”. key and a test certificate in one file, run “make SOMETHING.pem”.

To create a key for use with Apache, run “make genkey”. To create a CSR for use with Apache, run “make certreq”. To create a test certificate for use with Apache, run “make testcert”. Examples: make server.key make server.csr make server.crt make stunnel.pem make genkey make certreq make testcert

The make command utilizes the makefile to create SSL certificates. Without any arguments the make command simply prints the information listed in the preceding example. The following defines each argument you can give to make: ■

make server.key — Creates generic public/private key pairs.

■

make server.csr — Generates a generic SSL certificate service request.

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make server.crt — Generates a generic SSL test certificate.

■

make stunnel.pem — Generates a generic SSL test certificate, but puts the private key in

12

the same file as the SSL test certificate. ■

make genkey — Same as make server.key except it places the key in the ssl.key

directory. ■

make certreq — Same as make server.csr except it places the certificate service request in the ssl.csr directory.

■

make testcert — Same as make server.crt except it places the test certificate in the ssl.crt directory.

Using Third-Party Certificate Signers In the real world, I know who you are because I recognize your face, your voice, and your mannerisms. On the Internet, I cannot see these things and must rely on a trusted third party to vouch for your identity. To ensure that a certificate is immutable, it has to be signed by a trusted third party when the certificate is issued and validated every time an end user taking advantage of your secure site loads it. The following is a list of the trusted third-party certificate signers: ■

GlobalSign — www.globalsign.com/

■

GeoTrust — https://www.geotrust.com/

■

VeriSign — https://www.verisign.com/

■

RapidSSL — www.freessl.com/

■

Thawte — www.thawte.com/

■

EnTrust — www.entrust.com/

■

ipsCA — www.ipsca.com/

■

COMODO Group — www.comodogroup.com/

Because of the fluid nature of the certificate business, some of these companies may not be in business when you read this, while others may have come into existence. To get a more current list of certificate authorities, from your Firefox browser select Edit ➪ Preferences. From the Preferences window that appears, select Advanced ➪ Encryption, then select the View Certificates button. From the Certificate Manager window that appears, refer to the Authorities tab to see Certificate Authorities from which you have received certificates.

NOTE

Each of these certificate authorities has gotten a chunk of cryptographic code embedded into nearly every Web browser in the world. This chunk of cryptographic code allows a Web browser to determine whether or not an SSL certificate is authentic. Without this validation, it would be easy for crackers to generate their own certificates and dupe people into thinking they are giving sensitive information to a reputable source. Certificates that are not validated are called self-signed certificates. If you come across a site that has not had its identity authenticated by a trusted third party, your Web browser will display a message similar to the one shown in Figure 12-5.

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FIGURE 12-5 A pop-up window alerts you when a site is not authenticated.

This does not necessarily mean that you are encountering anything illegal, immoral, or fattening. Many sites opt to go with self-signed certificates, not because they are trying to pull a fast one on you, but because there may not be any reason to validate the true owner of the certificate, and they do not want to pay the cost of getting a certificate validated. Some reasons for using a self-signed certificate include: ■

The Web site accepts no input. In this case, you as the end user, have nothing to worry about. There is no one trying to steal your information, because you aren’t giving out any information. Most of the time this is done simply to secure the Web transmission from the server to you. The data in and of itself may not be sensitive, but, being a good netizen, the site has enabled you to secure the transmission to keep third parties from sniffing the traffic.

■

The Web site caters to a small clientele. If you run a Web site that has a very limited set of customers, such as an Application Service Provider, you can simply inform your users that you have no certificate signer. They can browse the certificate information and validate it with you over the phone or in person.

■

Testing. It makes no sense to pay for an SSL certificate if you are testing only a new Web site or Web-based application. Use a self-signed certificate until you are ready to go live.

Creating a Certificate Service Request To create a third-party validated SSL certificate from a Fedora Linux system, you must first start with a Certificate Service Request (CSR). To create a CSR, do the following on your Web server: # cd /etc/httpd/conf # make certreq umask 77 ; \ /usr/bin/openssl genrsa -des3 1024 > /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key . . .

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You will now be asked to enter a password to secure your private key. This password should be at least eight characters long, and should not be a dictionary word or contain numbers or punctuation. The characters you type will not appear on the screen, to prevent someone from shoulder surfing your password. Enter pass phrase:

Enter the password again to verify. Verifying - Enter pass phrase:

The certificate generation process now begins. At this point, it is time to start adding some identifying information to the certificate that the thirdparty source will later validate. Before you can do this, you must unlock the private key you just created. Do so by typing the password you typed for your pass phrase. Then enter information as you are prompted. An example of a session for adding information for your certificate is shown here: Enter pass phrase for /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank. ----Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]: Connecticut Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]: Mystic Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Acme Marina, Inc. Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:InfoTech Common Name (eg, your name or your server’s hostname) []:www.acmemarina.com Email Address []: [email protected]

To complete the process, you will be asked if you want to add any extra attributes to your certificate. Unless you have a reason to provide more information, you should simply press Enter at each of the following prompts to leave them blank. Please enter the following ‘extra’ attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []:

Getting Your CSR Signed Once your CSR has been created, you need to send it to a signing authority for validation. The first step in this process is to select a signing authority. Each signing authority has different deals, prices, and products. Check out each of the signing authorities listed in the “Using Third-Party Certificate

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Signers” section earlier in this chapter to determine which works best for you. The following are areas where signing authorities differ: ■

Credibility and stability

■

Pricing

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Browser recognition

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Warranties

■

Support

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Certificate strength

After you have selected your certificate signer, you have to go through some validation steps. Each signer has a different method of validating identity and certificate information. Some require that you fax articles of incorporation, while others require a company officer be made available to talk to a validation operator. At some point in the process, you will be asked to copy and paste the contents of the CSR you created into the signer’s Web form. # cd /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.csr # cat server.csr -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST----MIIB6jCCAVMCAQAwgakxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVTMRQwEgYDVQQIEwtDb25uZWN0aWN1 dDEPMA0GA1UEBxMGTXlzdGljMRowGAYDVQQKExFBY21lIE1hcmluYSwgSW5jLjER MA8GA1UECxMISW5mb1RlY2gxGzAZBgNVBAMTEnd3dy5hY21lbWFyaW5hLmNvbTEn MCUGCSqGSIb3DQEJARYYd2VibWFzdGVyQGFjbWVtYXJpbmEuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqG SIb3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDcYH4pjMxKMldyXRmcoz8uBVOvwlNZHyRWw8ZG u2eCbvgi6w4wXuHwaDuxbuDBmw//Y9DMI2MXg4wDq4xmPi35EsO1Ofw4ytZJn1yW aU6cJVQro46OnXyaqXZOPiRCxUSnGRU+0nsqKGjf7LPpXv29S3QvMIBTYWzCkNnc gWBwwwIDAQABoAAwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEEBQADgYEANv6eJOaJZGzopNR5h2YkR9Wg l8oBl3mgoPH60Sccw3pWsoW4qbOWq7on8dS/++QOCZWZI1gefgaSQMInKZ1II7Fs YIwYBgpoPTMC4bp0ZZtURCyQWrKIDXQBXw7BlU/3A25nvkRY7vgNL9Nq+7681EJ8 W9AJ3PX4vb2+ynttcBI= -----END CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----

You can use your mouse to copy and paste the CSR into the signer’s Web form. After you have completed the information validation, paid for the signing, and answered all of the questions, you have completed most of the process. Within 48 to 72 hours you should receive an e-mail with your shiny new SSL certificate in it. The certificate will look similar to the following: -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----MIIEFjCCA3+gAwIBAgIQMI262Zd6njZgN97tJAVFODANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQQFADCB ujEfMB0GA1UEChMWVmVyaVNpZ24gVHJ1c3QgTmV0d29yazEXMBUGA1UECxMOVmVy aVNpZ24sIEluXy4xMzAxBgNVBAsTKlZlcmlTaWduIEludGVybmF0aW9uYWwgU2Vy dmVyIENBIC0gZ2xhc3MgMzFJMEcG10rY2g0Dd3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9DUFMg SW5jb3JwLmJ51FJlZi4gTElBQklMSVRZIExURC4oYyk5NyBWZXJpU2lnbjAeFw0w MzAxMTUwMDAwMDBaFw0wNDAxMTUyMzU5NTlaMIGuMQswCQYDVQQGEwJVUzETMBEG A1UECBMKV2FzaG1uZ3RvHiThErE371UEBxQLRmVkZXJhbCBXYXkxGzAZBgNVBAoU EklETSBTZXJ2aWMlcywgSW5jLjEMMAoGA1UECxQDd3d3MTMwMQYDVQQLFCpUZXJt cyBvZiB1c2UgYXQgd3d3LnZlcmlzawduLmNvbS9ycGEgKGMpMDAxFDASBgNVBAMU

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C2lkbXNlcnYuY29tMIGfMA0GCSqGS1b3DQEBAQUAA4GNADCBiQKBgQDaHSk+uzOf 7jjDFEnqT8UBa1L3yFILXFjhj3XpMXLGWzLmkDmdJjXsa4x7AhEpr1ubuVNhJVI0 FnLDopsx4pyr4n+P8FyS4M5grbcQzy2YnkM2jyqVF/7yOW2pDl30t4eacYYaz4Qg q9pTxhUzjEG4twvKCAFWfuhEoGu1CMV2qQ1DAQABo4IBJTCCASEwCQYDVR0TBAIw ADBEBgNVHSAEPTA7MDkGC2CGSAGG+EUBBxcDMCOwKAYIKwYBBQUHAgEWHGh0dHBz Oi8vd3d3LnZlcmlzaWduLmNvbS9ycGEwCwYDVRRPBAQDAgWgMCgGA1UdJQQhMB8G CWCGSAGG+EIEM00c0wIYBQUHAwEGCCsGAQUFBwmCMDQGCCsGAQUFBwEBBCgwJjAk BggrBgEFBQcwAYYYaHR0cDovL29jc2AudmVyaXNpZ24uY29tMEYGA1UdHwQ/MD0w O6A5oDeGNWh0dHA6Ly9jcmwudmVyaxNpZ24uY29tL0NsYXNzM0ludGVybmF0aW9u YWxTZXJ2ZXIuY3JsMBkGCmCGSAgG+E+f4Nfc3zYJODA5NzMwMTEyMA0GCSqGSIb3 DQEBBAUAA4GBAJ/PsVttmlDkQai5nLeudLceb1F4isXP17B68wXLkIeRu4Novu13 8lLZXnaR+acHeStR01b3rQPjgv2y1mwjkPmC1WjoeYfdxH7+Mbg/6fomnK9auWAT WF0iFW/+a8OWRYQJLMA2VQOVhX4znjpGcVNY9AQSHm1UiESJy7vtd1iX -----END CERTIFICATE-----

Copy and paste this certificate into an empty file called server.crt, which must reside in the /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.crt directory, and restart your Web server: # service httpd restart

Assuming your Web site was previously working fine, you can now view it in a secure fashion by placing an s after the http in the Web address. So if you previously viewed your Web site at www.acmemarina.com, you can now view it in a secure fashion by going to https://www .acmemarina.com.

Creating Self-Signed Certificates Generating and running a self-signed SSL certificate is much easier than having a signed certificate. To generate a self-signed SSL certificate on a Fedora system, do the following: 1. Remove the key and certificate that currently exist: # cd /etc/httpd/conf # rm ssl.key/server.key ssl.crt/server.crt

2. Create your own server key: # make genkey

3. Create the self-signed certificate by typing the following: # make testcert umask 77 ; \ /usr/bin/openssl req -new -key /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.key -x509 -days 365 -out /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key/server.crt . . .

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At this point, it is time to start adding some identifying information to the certificate. Before you can do this, you must unlock the private key you just created. Do so by typing the password you typed earlier. Then follow this sample procedure: You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated into your certificate request. What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN. There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank For some fields there will be a default value, If you enter ‘.’, the field will be left blank. ----Country Name (2 letter code) [GB]:US State or Province Name (full name) [Berkshire]: Ohio Locality Name (eg, city) [Newbury]: Cincinnati Organization Name (eg, company) [My Company Ltd]:Industrial Press, Inc. Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:IT Common Name (eg, your name or your server’s hostname) []:www.industrialpressinc.com Email Address []: [email protected]

The generation process in this example places all files in the proper place. All you need to do is restart your Web server and add https instead of http in front of your URL. Don’t forget that you’ll get a certificate validation message from your Web browser, which you can safely ignore.

Restarting Your Web Server By now you’ve probably noticed that your Web server requires you to enter your certificate password every time it is started. This is to prevent someone from breaking into your server and stealing your private key. Should this happen, you are safe in the knowledge that the private key is a jumbled mess. The cracker will not be able to make use of it. Without such protection, a cracker could get your private key and easily masquerade as you, appearing to be legitimate in all cases. If you just cannot stand having to enter a password every time your Web server starts, and are willing to accept the increased risk, you can remove the password encryption on your private key. Simply do the following: # cd /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.key # /usr/bin/openssl rsa -in server.key -out

server.key

Troubleshooting Your Certificates The following tips should help if you are having problems with your SSL certificate: ■

Only one SSL certificate per IP address is allowed. If you want to add more than one SSLenabled Web site to your server, you must bind another IP address to the network interface.

■

Make sure the permission mask on the /etc/httpd/conf/ssl.* directories and their contents is 700 (rwx------).

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Make sure you aren’t blocking port 443 on your Web server. All https requests come in on port 443. If you are blocking it, you will not be able to get secure pages.

■

The certificate lasts for one year only. When that year is up, you have to renew your certificate with your certificate authority. Each certificate authority has a different procedure for doing this; check the authority’s Web site for more details.

■

Make sure you have the mod_ssl package installed. If it is not installed, you will not be able to serve any SSL-enabled traffic.

12

Using Linux Live CD Security Tools If you suspect your computers or networks have been exploited, a wide range of security tools is available for Linux that you can use to scan for viruses, do forensics, or monitor activities of intruders. The best way to learn about and use many of these tools is by using dedicated, bootable Linux distributions built specifically for security.

Advantages of Security Live CDs One great advantage of using a live CD or DVD to check the security of a system is that it separates the tools you use to check a system from the system itself. In other words, because the tools for finding problems on an installed system may themselves be compromised, a live CD of trusted software can be a good way to insure that you are testing a potentially infected system with clean tools. If despite your best efforts (good passwords, firewalls, checking log files, and so on) you believe an intruder may have gained control of your system, you can use a live CD to check it out. Security live CDs such as System Rescue CD, INSERT, and BackTrack (all included on this book’s CD or DVD) are great tools for checking and fixing your system.

CROSS-REF

See Chapter 28 for more information on bootable security and rescue CDs.

Using INSERT to Check for Rootkits If an intruder gains access to your Linux system to try to take over control of that system (and use it for more than just a hit-and-run), he or she might install what is called a rootkit. A rootkit is a set of software that the intruder will use to: ■

Carry out his or her intent (such as hosting false Web content from your server)

■

Hide his or her activities from your view

Rootkits can employ different methods for hiding what they do. Often a rootkit will replace common system commands with its own version of those commands. So, for example, replacing ls and ps could be modified to not list the content added to your machine or not show certain processes running on your system, respectively.

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The chkrootkit command is a good tool for checking for well-known rootkits, as well as for generally checking system files to see if they have been infected. This tool will check for infections in disk-checking tools (such as du, find, and ls), process table tools (ps and pstree), login-related commands (login, rlogin, and slogin), and many other tools. Here’s how to run chkrootkit from INSERT: 1. Insert the CD that comes with this book into the CD drive and reboot. 2. From the boot screen, choose Insert. INSERT should boot to a desktop. 3. To be able to check the Linux system installed on your hard disk, you need to mount the partition representing your installed Linux system. Using the mount.app applet (displayed in the lower-right corner of the screen), click the arrows on that applet to click through the available storage media. If Linux was installed on the first partition of the first hard disk, select hda1. Then click the mount button to mount that partition. 4. Open a Terminal window by right-clicking the desktop and selecting Terminal Session ➪ Aterm - super user. A Terminal window opens. 5. Run the chkrootkit command and save the output to a file. For example, run the following command to check the file system mounted on /mnt/hda1 and send the output to a filename chkroot-output.txt: # chkrootkit -r /mnt/hda1 > /tmp/chkroot-output.txt

6. When the command completes, page through the output. For example: # less /tmp/chkroot-output.txt ROOTDIR is ‘/mnt/hda1/’ Checking ‘amd’ ... not found Checking ‘basename’ ... not infected . . .

7. Press the spacebar to page through the output. The output should reveal the following: ■

If a rootkit has been planted on your system, some commands will likely come up as infected.

■

If any files or directories implanted by commonly known rootkits are detected, those will be noted. The command checks for more than 60 known rootkits.

■

If any suspicious-looking files appear, they will be listed so you can check them (although they might not represent the presence of a rootkit).

If the search turns up a rootkit, chances are that someone else has control of your machine. Often the best course of action is to reinstall the system. You may be able to replace just the commands that have been infected, but it you do you first want to make sure that make sure that multiple backdoors have not already been placed on your system.

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Summary Securing your Linux system is something you need to do from the very beginning and continue as you use your Linux system. By implementing good security practices (such as practices described in the security checklist at the beginning of this chapter), you stand a better chance of keeping out intruders over the long haul. Going forward, you can help keep your Linux system secure by using encrypted network applications (such as SSH), monitoring log files, and adhering to good password techniques. If your Linux system is being used as a server, you need to take particular care in narrowing the access to the server and protecting data. To that end, you can use such tools as TCP wrappers (to limit who can use your server) and certificates (to ensure that both ends of communications with your Web server are authenticated).

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Setting Up Linux Servers IN THIS PART Chapter 13 Running a Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) server Chapter 14 Running a Mail Server Chapter 15 Running a Print Server Chapter 16 Running a File Server

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W

ith the growing availability of broadband Internet connections and a popular desire to run personal Web sites and Web logs (blogs), an increasing number of people are setting up Web application servers on their home Internet connections. Web applications are also finding more popularity in business environments because Web applications reduce the number of programs that need to be maintained on workstations. One popular variety of Web application server is known as a LAMP server because it brings together Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. LAMP servers combine components from several open source projects to form a fast, reliable, and economical platform for other readily available applications.

IN THIS CHAPTER Components of a LAMP server Setting up your LAMP server Operating your LAMP server Troubleshooting Securing your Web traffic with SSL/TLS

This chapter helps you install and configure your own LAMP server. It begins with an introduction to the various components, guides you through the installation and configuration, and finishes with the installation of a sample Web application. The examples in this chapter are based on a system running Ubuntu but conceptually should work on other distributions, if you take into account that other Linux systems use different ways to install the software and start and stop services. Descriptions of how to set up LAMP configuration files, however, should work across multiple Linux distributions with only slight modifications. You can find more information about Ubuntu in Chapter 17.

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Components of a LAMP Server You’re probably familiar with Linux by this point, so this section focuses on the other three components — Apache, MySQL, and PHP — and the functions they serve within a LAMP system. (Sometimes the “P” in LAMP is used to indicate that the Perl or Python scripting language is used for the applications running on a LAMP server.)

Apache Within a LAMP server, Apache HTTPD (also known as the Apache HTTP Server) provides the service with which the client Web browsers communicate. The daemon runs in the background on your server and waits for requests from clients. Web browsers connect to the HTTP daemon and send requests, which the daemon interprets, sending back the appropriate data. Apache HTTPD includes an interface that allows modules to tie into the process to handle specific portions of a request. Among other things, modules are available to handle the processing of scripting languages such as Perl or PHP within Web documents and to add encryption to connections between clients and the server. Apache began as a collection of patches and improvements to the HTTP daemon developed by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The NCSA HTTP daemon was the most popular HTTP server at the time, but had started to show its age after its author, Rob McCool, left NCSA in mid-1994.

NOTE

Another project that came from NCSA is Mosaic. Most modern Web browsers can trace their origins to Mosaic.

In early 1995, a group of developers formed the Apache Group and began making extensive modifications to the NCSA HTTPD code base. Apache soon replaced NCSA HTTPD as the most popular Web server, a title it still holds today. The Apache Group later formed the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) to promote the development of Apache and other free software. With the start of new projects at ASF, the Apache server became known as Apache HTTPD, although the two terms are still used interchangeably. Currently, ASF has more than 60 projects, including Jakarta (open source Java solutions), MyFaces (a web application framework), and SpamAssassin (an e-mail filtering program).

MySQL MySQL is an open source DBMS (database management system) that has become popular among Webmasters because of its speed, stability, and features. MySQL consists of a server that handles storage and access to data, and clients to handle interfacing with and managing the server. Client libraries are also included, and they can be used by third-party programs, such as PHP, to connect to the server. In a LAMP server, MySQL is used for storing data appropriate to the Web applications that are being used. Common uses include data such as usernames and passwords, entries in a journal, and data files.

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NOTE

13

If you are not sure how a database works, refer to the sidebar “How MySQL Databases Are Structured” later in this chapter.

MySQL was originally developed by Michael (Monty) Widenius of TcX (Sweden). In 1994, TcX needed a backend database for Web applications and decided to use one supporting SQL, a standardized and widely recognized language for interacting with databases. TcX investigated the free databases that were available at the time, plus some commercial databases, but could not find a system that supported the features it needed and could handle its large databases at the same time. Because it already had experience writing database programs, TcX decided that the best way to get what it wanted was to develop a new system that supported SQL. In 1995, TcX released the source code for MySQL on the Internet. MySQL was not an open source program at that time (because of some of the restrictions in its license), but it still began to see widespread use. MySQL was later released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), and the company MySQL AB was formed to manage MySQL. In February 2008, Sun Microsystems acquired MySQL AB.

PHP PHP is a programming language that was developed specifically for use in Web scripts. It is preferred by many developers because it’s designed to be embedded within HTML documents, making it simpler to manage Web content and scripts within a single file. PHP originated as a set of Perl scripts by Rasmus Lerdorf called PHP/FI (Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter). Over time, more features were implemented, and Rasmus rewrote PHP/FI in C. In late 1997, Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski began working on a complete rewrite of PHP/FI. As the language evolved and more features were implemented, Gutmans and Suraski decided that it would be appropriate to rename the project to more accurately reflect these features. The name PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) was chosen, with Lerdorf’s approval, to maintain familiarity for users of PHP/FI. The core features of PHP are included within the PHP code itself, and additional features are implemented in the form of extensions. The latest stable version of PHP is 5.2.6, but several implementations still include the libapache-mod-php4 (PHP 4) package, and PHP 6 is in development. Among the major changes offered in PHP 5 is enhanced security. This release improved the security features that have always been in PHP and fixed some possible holes. This made the language even more stable. Additional information about each release, and what it offers, can be found at www.php.net/.

Setting Up Your LAMP Server Before proceeding through the examples in this section, be sure that your Linux operating system is installed and configured. The specific instructions in this section are for an Ubuntu system.

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However, the same procedure should work on other Debian-based systems with few or no differences. If you try this on a different Linux system, understand that such things as software packaging, the location of startup scripts and configuration files, and other features may be different. When you install your Linux system, you typically choose whether to install a set of software packages that are appropriate for a workstation or a server. You may choose to set up a server on a system that has been configured using the layout and software packages intended for a workstation. However, that’s not recommended unless you are providing services for only a very small number of users whom you know well and trust. In fact, many systems administrators don’t even like to have the X Window System and other GUI components installed on a server. Another option to using the Apache package that comes with Ubuntu is to use a LAMPP server. LAMPP is an all-in-one LAMP server with PERL support added. The XAMPP project (www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) is one implementation of a LAMPP server (which is available as a Windows server as well). XAMPP is a really good quick-and-dirty way to get a LAMPP server running. It is also good for testing pages before publishing when you have only one machine.

NOTE

Installing Apache The next step toward a functioning LAMP server is to install the Apache HTTP server, which can be found in the apache package. Use APT to retrieve and install the package: $ sudo apt-get install apache2

The server should automatically start once the installation is finished, which means that you’re now ready to install PHP.

Installing PHP Now you’re ready to install and test the PHP module in Apache. This is the most common method for installing PHP, but it introduces some security concerns on multiuser systems because all PHP scripts are run as the same user as the Apache daemon. Be sure to read the Security section of the PHP manual at http://php.net/manual/en/security.php before granting other users access to manipulate PHP files on your server. The PHP Apache module is contained in the php5 package, which is installed using APT. The following lines download and install the Apache php5 module and the MySQL extensions, configure Apache to load the module automatically, and instruct Apache to reload its configuration: $ sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql php5-gd $ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart Just as the numbering and versions of Apache can sometimes be confusing, similar thoughts can be expressed about PHP. As of this writing, there are active development versions in both 5.x and 4.4.x (and PHP 6 is under development). Even though PHP 5 has been out for a while, the PHP Group has committed to releasing security — and related — updates for PHP 4 through most of 2008.

NOTE

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At this point, Apache should be ready to process HTTP requests, complete with processing of PHP files. To test it, create a file named /var/www/info.php containing a call to the phpinfo() function: $ sudo cat > /var/www/info.php ^D $ sudo chmod 644 /var/www/info.php

The ^D means that you should press Ctrl+D on your keyboard. This tells the cat command that you are at the end of the input. Now try opening the page by going to http://localhost/info. php. You should see a page full of information about your Apache and PHP installation, as shown in Figure 13-1. If, instead of an information page, you are prompted to download the file, check the appropriate PHP installation section (earlier in the chapter) to verify that all the steps were completed successfully.

FIGURE 13-1 The PHP information page

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After everything is tested and working, you should remove the info.php file so that it can’t be used by potential attackers to gather specifics about your system: $ sudo rm -f /var/www/info.php

Installing MySQL The MySQL database system is divided into three main packages: the server, clients, and client libraries. The server is contained within the mysql-server package and requires the other two to function. APT is aware of this, which means the packages will be installed automatically when you install mysql-server: $ sudo apt-get install mysql-server If you are using a Debian system, make sure the host name settings have been configured as described in Chapter 19 before installing the mysql-server package. Failure to do so could result in an error that causes the installation to fail.

NOTE

Access to databases within MySQL is managed based on account information stored within the mysql database. As with UNIX systems, the superuser account is named root. The default installation asks you to set a password on this account. If you don’t set it at this point, you can always set it later.

How MySQL Databases Are Structured

F

or those who aren’t familiar with how a database system is structured, here’s a quick introduction: ■ Databases are the basic organizational block in a database system. Most database systems (includ-

ing MySQL) are designed to support multiple databases from a single server. This allows separate databases to be created for different users or different functions. ■ Tables are found within a database. A table is very much like a spreadsheet in that it has rows and

columns. Columns define the different types of data that every entry can or must have, and every entry takes the form of a row. A database can hold multiple tables, allowing you to have many different data sets within a single database.

Operating Your LAMP Server With the components of your LAMP server installed and running, you are ready to configure Apache and try it out. For this example, Apache is set up to serve content for your own domain using a feature called virtual hosting, after which you’ll see how to install the Coppermine Photo Gallery program, which enables you to create an online photo gallery on your LAMP server.

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Editing Your Apache Configuration Files The configuration files for Apache HTTPD are incredibly flexible, meaning that you can configure the server to behave in almost any manner you want. This flexibility comes at the cost of increased complexity in the form of a large number of configuration options (called directives), but in practice there are only a few directives with which you’ll need to be familiar.

NOTE

See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/ for a complete list of directives supported by Apache.

In Ubuntu, the Apache configuration is stored in text files read by the Apache server, beginning with /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. Configuration is read from start to finish, with most directives being processed in the order in which they are read. Additional files may also be read based on the AccessConfig, ResourceConfig, and Include directives. On modern installations, the AccessConfig and ResourceConfig options point to empty files, and the traditional contents of those files have been moved to the main apache2.conf file. The Include directive is distinct from AccessConfig and ResourceConfig in that it can appear more than once and can include more than one file at a time. Files referenced by Include directives are processed as if their contents appeared at the location of the relevant Include statement. Include can point to a single file, to a directory in which all files are read, or to a wildcard that specifies a specific set of files within a directory. For example, virtual host files are included in apache2.conf by this line: Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

NOTE

Subdirectories are also processed when Include points to a directory.

The scope of many configuration directives can be altered based on context. In other words, some parameters may be set on a global level and then changed for a specific file, directory, or virtual host. Other directives are always global in nature, such as those specifying which IP addresses the server listens on, and some are valid only when applied to a specific location. Locations are configured in the form of a start tag containing the location type and a resource location, followed by the configuration options for that location, and finishing with an end tag. This form is often called a configuration block, and looks very similar to HTML. A special type of configuration block, known as a location block, is used to override settings for specific files or directories. These blocks take the following form: (options specific to objects matching the specifier go within this block)

Different types of location tags exist and are selected based on the type of resource location that is being specified. The specifier that is included in the start tag is handled based on the type of location tag. The ones you generally use and encounter are Directory, Files, and Location.

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NOTE

In this chapter, Location refers specifically to the third type of tag, and location refers generically to any of the three.

■

Directory tags are used to specify a path based on the location on the file system. For instance, refers to the root directory on the computer. Directories inherit settings from directories above them, with the most specific Directory block overriding less specific ones, regardless of the order in which they appear in the configuration files.

■

Files tags are used to specify files by name. Files tags can be contained within Directory blocks to limit them to files under that directory. Settings within a Files block will override the ones in Directory blocks.

■

Location tags are used to specify the URI used to access a file or directory. This is different from Directory in that it relates to the address contained within the request and not to the real location of the file on the drive. Location tags are processed last and override the settings in Directory and Files blocks.

Match versions of these tags — DirectoryMatch, FilesMatch, and LocationMatch — have the same function but can contain regular expressions in the resource specification. FilesMatch and LocationMatch blocks are processed at the same time as Files and Location, respectively. DirectoryMatch blocks are processed after Directory blocks. Apache can also be configured to process configuration options contained within files with the name specified in the AccessFileName directive (which is generally set to .htaccess). Directives in access configuration files are applied to all objects under the directory they contain, including subdirectories and their contents. Access configuration files are processed at the same time as Directory blocks, using a similar “most specific match” order. Access control files are useful for allowing users to change specific settings without having access to the server configuration files. The configuration directives permitted within an access configuration file are determined by the AllowOverride setting on the directory in which they are contained. Some directives do not make sense at that level and generally result in a “server internal error” message when trying to access the URI. The AllowOverride option is covered in detail at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#allowoverride.

NOTE

Three directives commonly found in location blocks and access control files are DirectoryIndex, Options, and ErrorDocument: ■

DirectoryIndex tells Apache which file to load when the URI contains a directory but not a filename. This directive doesn’t work in Files blocks.

■

Options is used to adjust how Apache handles files within a directory. The ExecCGI option tells Apache that files in that directory can be run as CGI scripts, and the Includes option tells Apache that server-side includes (SSI) are permitted. Also commonly used is the Indexes option, which tells Apache to generate a list of files if one of the filenames found in the DirectoryIndex setting is missing. An absolute list of options can be specified, or the list of options can be modified by adding + or - in front of an option name. See http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#options for more information.

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13

ErrorDocument directives can be used to specify which file to send in the result of an error. The directive must specify an error code and the full URI for the error document. Possible error codes include 403 (access denied), 404 (file not found), and 500 (server internal error). You can find more information about the ErrorDocument directive at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#errordocument.

Another common use for location blocks and access control files is to limit access to a resource. The Allow directive can be used to permit access to matching hosts, and the Deny directive can be used

to forbid it. Both of these options can occur more than once within a block and are handled based on the Order setting. Setting Order to Deny,Allow permits access to any host that is not listed in a Deny directive. A setting of Allow,Deny denies access to any host not allowed in an Allow directive. As with most other options, the most specific Allow or Deny option for a host is used, meaning that you can Deny access to a range and Allow access to subsets of that range. By adding the Satisfy option and some additional parameters, you can add password authentication. For more information about access control, see http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_access.html. Location blocks (in the generic sense) can be enclosed within a VirtualHost block. Virtual hosts, which are described in greater detail in the next section, are a convenient (and almost essential) tool for altering server behavior based on the server address or name that a request is directed to. Most global configuration options are applied to virtual hosts but can be overridden by directives within the VirtualHost block.

Adding a Virtual Host to Apache Apache supports the creation of separate Web sites within a single server to keep content separate. Individual sites are configured on the same server in the form of virtual hosts, which also are useful when only a single site will be used. Here’s how to configure a virtual host: Create a file named /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf using this template: NameVirtualHost *:80 ServerName www.example.org ServerAlias web.example.org DocumentRoot /home/username/public_html/ DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm

The NameVirtualHost line tells Apache to determine which virtual host to serve documents from based on the hostname provided by the HTTP client. The *:80 specification means that requests to port 80 on any IP address will be treated in this manner. Similarly, the *:80 specification in the VirtualHost block indicates what address and port this virtual host applies to. The port is optional for both the NameVirtualHost and VirtualHost specifications, but should always be used to prevent interference with SSL virtual hosts.

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The ServerName and ServerAlias lines tell Apache which names this virtual host should be recognized as, so replace them with names appropriate to your site. You can leave out the ServerAlias line if you do not have any alternate names for the server, and you can specify more than one name per ServerAlias line or have multiple ServerAlias lines if you have several alternate names. The DocumentRoot line specifies where the Web documents for this site are stored. If you plan to have more than one site per user, you will need to modify this layout appropriately. Replace username with the name of the account that is administrating the Web site. For this example, each Web site must be administered by a different user account. Having your virtual host file in the sites-available directory does not enable it. For it to be enabled, you must create a link to that file from the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled directory. In Ubuntu (and other Debian-based systems), you can use the a2ensite command as follows: $ sudo a2ensite example.com.conf Site example.com.conf installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable

With the host enabled, use apache2ctl to check the configuration, and then do a graceful restart: $ sudo apache2ctl configtest Syntax OK $ sudo apache2ctl graceful

NOTE

Unless you have already created it, you will receive a warning about public_html not existing. Run mkdir ~/public_html as the user that owns the Web site in order to

create it.

Additional virtual hosts can be added by repeating the VirtualHost block and repeating the configuration test (configtest) and reload (graceful) steps. Keeping individual virtual hosts in separate files is a convenient way to manage virtual hosts. However, you should be careful to keep your primary virtual host in a file that will be read before the others, because the first virtual host receives requests for site names that don’t match any in your configuration. In a commercial Web-hosting environment, it is common to make a special default virtual host that contains an error message indicating that no site by that name has been configured.

NOTE

User Content and the userdir Setting In situations in which you do not have the ability to set up a virtual host for every user that you want to provide Web space for, you can easily make use of the mod_userdir module in Apache. With this module enabled (which it is not by default), the public_html directory under every user’s home directory is available to the Web at http://servername/~username/. For example, a user named wtucker on www.example.com stores Web content in /home/wtucker/public_ html. That content would be available from http://www.example.com/~wtucker.

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To enable the mod_userdir module, as well as other installed modules that are not enabled by default, you need to create links from the appropriate .load and .conf files in the /etc/ apache2/mods-available directory to the mods-enabled directory. In Ubuntu, you can do this with the a2enmod command and restart the server as follows: $ a2enmod userdir Module userdir installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload to enable. $ sudo apache2ctl graceful

Installing a Web Application: Coppermine Photo Gallery Once your LAMP server is operational, you can begin installing or creating applications to run on it. One such application is Coppermine Photo Gallery (CPG), the installation of which is demonstrated in this section. CPG is a Web-based photo gallery management system written in PHP. Through its Web interface, you can upload pictures to your own photo galleries, which will be available on the Web through your LAMP server. You can install CPG under a virtual host or under a user’s home directory on your main host. A single server can easily support many CPG installations using either of these methods. To install CPG on the Ubuntu system described in this chapter, follow these steps: 1. Install the unzip and imagemagick programs. Unzip is used to unpack the CPG program after downloading, and imagemagick is used to resize images and create thumbnails: $ sudo apt-get install unzip imagemagick

2. Create a MySQL database for CPG. You can use a database name other than cpg if you wish. The database username (the part before @’localhost’ in the GRANT statement) and the database name do not need to match. Be sure to replace mypassword with something different: $ sudo mysql -u root -p Enter password: Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g. Your MySQL connection id is 8 Server version: 5.0.41a-3ubuntu5.1 (Ubuntu) Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. buffer.

Type ‘\c’ to clear the

mysql> CREATE DATABASE cpg; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec) mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON cpg.* TO ‘cpg’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘mypassword’; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> \q Bye

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3. Log in as the user that will own the CPG installation and download the latest version from the Internet as follows: $ mkdir -p ~/public_html $ cd ~/public_html $ wget http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/coppermine/cpg1.4.18.zip --19:30:46-- http://internap.dl.sourceforge.net/coppermine/cpg1.4.18.zip => `cpg1.4.18.zip’ Resolving internap.dl.sourceforge.net... 64.74.207.41, 66.35.250.221,... Connecting to internap.dl.sourceforge.net[64.74.207.41]:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response...200 OK Length: 3,824,914 [application/zip] 100%[======================>] 3,824,914 618.94K/s ETA 00:00 19:30:53 (611.29 KB/s) - `cpg1.4.18.zip’ saved [3824914/3824914]

4. Unpack the archive: $ unzip cpg1.4.18.zip Archive: cpg1.4.18.zip inflating: cpg1418/addfav.php inflating: cpg1418/xp_publish.php [...] inflating: cpg1418/zipdownload.php

5. Rename the freshly unpacked cpg directory, and then set the permissions so that files can be uploaded from PHP: $ $ $ $

mv cpg1418 photos cd photos chmod 777 include find albums -type d | xargs chmod 777

6. Go to a Web browser on any machine that can reach your LAMP server over the network and open the install.php script under your coppermine directory. ■

If you’re installing CPG under a user directory under your main host, the URL is http://servername/~username/photos/install.php.

■

If you’re installing CPG under a virtual host, the URL is http://virtualhostname/ photos/install.php.

7. Configure CPG to work with your installation by filling in the following fields and selecting Let’s Go!: ■

Username and Password — The administrative login and password that you will use to administer CPG.

■

Email Address — The administrator’s (your) e-mail address.

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MySQL Host — The server name that CGP will connect to for the database. In this case, you want to use localhost.

■

MySQL Database Name — The name of the database that you created in Step 2. (In the example, I used cpg.)

■

MySQL Username and Password — The username and password that you created in Step 2 for accessing the database. (In the example, I used cpg and mypassword, respectively.)

■

MySQL table prefix — The prefix for the tables that will be used by CPG. The default value (cpg14x_) is fine.

■

ImageMagick path — The directory containing the imagemagick binary. On Debian systems, this is /usr/bin.

13

8. You’re now done installing CPG. At this point you can click Let’s Continue to see the default Coppermine Photo Gallery page. You can use this CPG Web interface to create photo galleries and upload photos. Figure 13-2 shows a sample gallery. FIGURE 13-2 A sample Coppermine photo gallery

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While a complete description of the dozens of features of the Coppermine Photo Gallery is beyond the scope of this example, here are a few tips if you want to continue setting up a working photo gallery. To begin, go to the home page of the photo gallery you just created (http://server/~user/ photos) and log in with the administrative user and password you created. Then do the following: ■

Add an album — Click the Albums button and then click New. Type a name for the album and select Apply modifications. Then select Continue as instructed.

■

Upload files — Click the Upload file link at the top of the page. From the Upload file page, add either the full paths to file names (File Uploads) or Web addresses (URI/URL Uploads) of the images you want to install. Then click Continue. If the uploads were successful, click Continue again. At this point, you can add information to be associated with each image you just uploaded. Select the Album each will go into, a file title, and a description, and then select Continue. After you have added information for all you uploaded images, click Continue again to return to the main photo gallery. There you can see your images sorted by album, as random files, or by latest additions.

If you installed Coppermine on a public server, you can give the Web address of that server to your friends and family and they can begin viewing your photo albums. There is a lot you can do to customize your Coppermine Photo Gallery. You can begin by going through the settings on the Configuration page (click the Config link to get there). Click the Users or Groups link to create user or group accounts that give special access to upload or modify the content of your gallery.

Troubleshooting In any complex environment, you occasionally run into problems. This section includes tips for isolating and resolving the most common errors that you may encounter. This section refers to the Apache HTTPD binary as apache2, which is what it is named on Ubuntu and other Debian-based systems. However, in many other distributions, the binary is named httpd. On different systems, you may need to substitute httpd for apache when it appears by itself, although not for commands such as apache2ctl.

NOTE

Configuration Errors You may occasionally run into configuration errors or script problems that prevent Apache from starting or that prevent specific files from being accessible. Most of these problems can be isolated and resolved using two Apache-provided tools: the apache2ctl program and the system error log. When encountering a problem, first use the apache2ctl program with the configtest parameter to test the configuration. In fact, it’s a good idea to develop the habit of running this every time you make a configuration change: # apache2ctl configtest Syntax OK

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# apache2ctl graceful /usr/sbin/apache2ctl graceful: httpd gracefully restarted

In the event of a syntax error, apache2ctl indicates where the error occurs and also does its best to give a hint about the nature of the problem. You can then use the graceful restart option (apache2ctl graceful) to instruct Apache to reload its configuration without disconnecting any active clients. The graceful restart option in apache2ctl automatically tests the configuration before sending the reload signal to apache, but it is still a good idea to get in the habit of running the manual configuration test after making any configuration changes.

NOTE

Some configuration problems pass the syntax tests performed by apache2ctl, but then result in the HTTP daemon exiting immediately after reloading its configuration. If this happens, use the tail command to check Apache’s error log for useful information. On Debian systems, the error log is in /var/log/apache2/error.log. On other systems, the location can be found by looking for the ErrorLog directive in your Apache configuration. An error message that you might encounter looks something like this: [crit] (98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to port 80

This error often indicates that something else is bound to port 80 (not very common unless you have attempted to install another Web server), that another Apache process is already running (apache2ctl usually catches this), or that you have told Apache to bind the same IP address and port combination in more than one place. You can use the netstat command to view the list of programs (including Apache) with TCP ports in the LISTEN state: # netstat -nltp Active Internet connections (only servers) Proto Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

PID/Program name 2105/apache2

The output from netstat (which was shortened to fit here) indicates that an instance of the apache2 process with a process ID of 2105 is listening (as indicated by the LISTEN state) for connections to any local IP address (indicated by 0.0.0.0) on port 80 (the standard HTTP port). If a different program is listening to port 80, it is shown there. You can use the kill command to terminate the process, but if it is something other than apache2 (or httpd), you should also find out why it is running. If you don’t see any other processes listening on port 80, it could be that you have accidentally told Apache to listen on the same IP address and port combination in more than one place. There are three configuration directives that can be used for this: BindAddress, Port, and Listen: ■

BindAddress — Enables you to specify a single IP address to listen on, or you can specify all IP addresses using the * wildcard. You should never have more than one BindAddress

statement in your configuration file.

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Port — Specifies which TCP port to listen on but does not enable you to specify the IP address. Port is generally not used more than once in the configuration.

■

Listen — Enables you to specify both an IP address and a port to bind to. The IP address can be in the form of a wildcard, and you can have multiple Listen statements in your configuration file.

Generally, it is a good idea to use only one type of these directives to avoid confusion. Of the three, Listen is the most flexible, so it is probably the one you want to use the most. A common error when using Listen is to specify a port on all IP addresses (*:80) as well as that same port on a specific IP address (1.2.3.4:80), which results in the error from make_sock. Configuration errors relating to SSL (discussed later in this chapter) commonly result in Apache improperly. Make sure all key and certificate files exist and that they are in the proper format (use openssl to examine them, as shown later in this chapter). For other error messages, try doing a Web search to see if somebody else has encountered the problem. In most cases, you can find a solution within the first few matches. If you aren’t getting enough information in the ErrorLog, you can configure it to log more information using the LogLevel directive. The options available for this directive, in increasing order of verbosity, are emerg, alert, crit, error, warn, notice, info, and debug. Select only one of these. Any message that is at least as important as the LogLevel you select will be stored in the ErrorLog. On a typical server, this is set to warn. You should not set it to any lower than crit, and you should avoid leaving it set to debug because that can slow down the server and result in a very large ErrorLog. As a last resort, you can also try running apache2 manually to check for crashes or other error messages: # /usr/sbin/apache2 -d /etc/apache2 -F ; echo $?

The -d flag tells apache where to look for its configuration file, and the -F flag tells it to run in the foreground. The semicolon separates this command from the echo command, which displays the return code ($?) from Apache after it exits. In the event that apache crashes during this step, you can use tools such as gdb and strace to trace the problem.

Access Forbidden and Server Internal Errors Two common types of errors that you may encounter when attempting to view specific pages on your server are permission errors and server internal errors. Both types of errors can usually be isolated using the information in the error log. After making any of the changes described in the following list to attempt to solve one of these problems, try the request again and then check the error log to see if the message has changed (for example, to show that the operation completed successfully).

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“File not found” errors can be checked in the same way as “access forbidden” and “server internal errors.” You may sometimes find that Apache is not looking where you think it is for a specific file. Generally, the entire path to the file shows up in the error log. Make sure you are accessing the correct virtual host, and check for any Alias settings that might be directing your location to a place you don’t expect.

NOTE

■

File permissions — A “file permissions prevent access” error indicates that the apache process is running as a user that is unable to open the requested file. Make sure that the account has execute permissions on the directory and every directory above it, as well as read permissions on the files themselves. Read permissions on a directory are also necessary if you want Apache to generate an index of files. See the manual page for chmod for more information about how to view and change permissions. Read permissions are not necessary for compiled binaries, such as those written in C or C++, but can be safely added unless there is a need to keep the contents of the pro-

NOTE gram secret. ■

Access denied — A “client denied by server configuration” error indicates that Apache was configured to deny access to the object. Check the configuration files for and sections that might affect the file you are trying to access. Remember that settings applied to a path are also applied to any paths below it. You can override these by changing the permissions only for the more specific path to which you want to allow access.

■

Index not found — The “Directory index forbidden by rule” error indicates that Apache could not find an index file with a name specified in the DirectoryIndex directive and was configured to not create an index containing a list of files in a directory. Make sure your index page, if you have one, has one of the names specified in the relevant DirectoryIndex directive, or add an Options Indexes line to the appropriate or section for that object.

■

Script crashed — “Premature end of script headers” errors can indicate that a script is crashing before it finishes. On occasion, the errors that caused this also show up in the error log. When you’re using suexec or suPHP, this error may also be caused by a file ownership or permissions error. These errors are indicated in /var/log/apache2 /suexec.log or /var/log/apache2/suphp.log.

Securing Your Web Traffic with SSL/TLS You want to add security for your server, including your own certificates. Your data is important, and so is your capability to pass it along your network or the Internet to others. Networks just aren’t secure enough by themselves to protect your communications. This section examines ways in which you can help guard your communications.

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Electronic commerce applications such as online shopping and banking are generally encrypted using either the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) specifications. TLS is based on version 3.0 of the SSL specifications, so they are very similar in nature. Because of this similarity — and because SSL is older — the SSL acronym is often used to refer to either variety. For Web connections, the SSL connection is established first, and then normal HTTP communication is “tunneled” through it. Because SSL negotiation takes place before any HTTP communication, name-based virtual hosting (which occurs at the HTTP layer) does not work easily with SSL. As a consequence, every SSL virtual host you configure should have a unique IP address. There are some tricks you can use to get name-based virtual hosting to work with apache2, but they are outside the scope of this procedure. (See the Apache site for more information: httpd.apache.org/docs/vhosts/ name-based.html.)

NOTE

During connection establishment between an SSL client and an SSL server, asymmetric (public key) cryptography is used to verify identities and establish the session parameters and the session key. A symmetric encryption algorithm such as DES or RC4 is then used with the negotiated key to encrypt the data transmitted during the session. The use of asymmetric encryption during the handshaking phase allows safe communication without the use of a preshared key, and the symmetric encryption is faster and more practical for use on the session data. For the client to verify the identity of the server, the server must have a previously generated private key, as well as a certificate containing the public key and information about the server. This certificate must be verifiable using a public key that is known to the client. Certificates are generally digitally signed by a third-party certificate authority (CA) that has verified the identity of the requester and the validity of the request to have the certificate signed. In most cases, the CA is a company that has made arrangements with the Web browser vendor to have its own certificate installed and trusted by default client installations. The CA then charges the server operator for its services. Commercial certificate authorities vary in price, features, and browser support, but remember that price is not always an indication of quality. Some popular CAs include InstantSSL (www.instantssl.com), Thawte (www.thawte.com), and VeriSign (www.verisign.com). You also have the option of creating self-signed certificates, although these should be used only for testing or when a very small number of people will be accessing your server and you do not plan to have certificates on multiple machines. Directions for generating a self-signed certificate are included in the following section. The last option is to run your own certificate authority. This is probably practical only if you have a small number of expected users and the means to distribute your CA certificate to them (including assisting them with installing it in their browsers). The process for creating a CA is too elaborate to cover in this book but is a worthwhile alternative to generating self-signed certificates. You can find guides on running your own CA at http://sial.org/howto/openssl/ca/. The following procedure describes how to generate and use SSL keys with the LAMP server (running on an Ubuntu system) configured in this chapter. For a general discussion of SSL keys and procedures specific to Fedora and other Red Hat systems, refer to Chapter 12.

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Generating Your Keys To begin setting up SSL, use the openssl command, which is part of the OpenSSL package, to generate your public and private key: 1. Use APT to verify that OpenSSL is installed. If it is not present, APT downloads and installs it automatically: $ sudo apt-get install openssl

2. Generate a 1024-bit RSA private key and save it to a file: $ # # # #

sudo su mkdir /etc/apache2/ssl.key/ cd /etc/apache2/ssl.key/ openssl genrsa -out server.key 1024 chmod 600 server.key

You can use a filename other than server.key and should do so if you plan to have more than one SSL host on your machine (which requires more than one IP address). Just make sure you specify the correct filename in the Apache configuration later.

NOTE

In higher-security environments, it is a good idea to encrypt the key by adding the -des3 argument after the genrsa argument on the openssl command line: # openssl genrsa -des3 -out server.key 1024

3. You are asked for a passphrase, which is needed every time you start Apache.

CAUTION

Do not lose this passphrase because it cannot be easily recovered.

4. If you plan to have your certificate signed by a CA (including one that you run yourself), generate a public key and a certificate signing request (CSR): # mkdir ../ssl.csr/ # cd ../ssl.csr/ # openssl req -new -key ../ssl.key/server.key -out server.csr Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:Washington Locality Name (eg, city) []:Bellingham Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Example Company, LTD. Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Network Operations Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:secure.example.org

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Email Address []:[email protected] Please enter the following ‘extra’ attributes to be sent with your certificate request A challenge password []: An optional company name []:

The Common Name should match the name that clients will use to access your server. Be sure to get the other details right if you plan to have the CSR signed by a third-party CA. 5. When using a third-party CA, submit the CSR to it and then place the certificate it provides you into /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server.crt (or a different file, as desired). 6. If you don’t plan to have your certificate signed, or if you want to test your configuration, generate a self-signed certificate and save it in a file named server.crt: # mkdir ../ssl.crt/ # cd ../ssl.crt/ # openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 -days 365 -key \ ../ssl.key/server.key -out server.crt Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]: . State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]: . Locality Name (eg, city) []: . Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:TEST USE ONLY Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:TEST USE ONLY Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:secure.example.org Email Address []:[email protected]

Configuring Apache to Support SSL/TLS Once your keys have been generated, you need to enable the mod_ssl Apache module, which adds SSL/TLS support to Apache, and then configure it using the appropriate configuration directives. The mod_ssl module is installed with the basic apache2.2-common package. Here’s how to enable it for your virtual hosts: 1. Run the a2enmod command to enable ssl: $ sudo a2enmod ssl Module ssl installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload to enable.

2. Add an SSL-enabled virtual host to your Apache configuration files. Using the earlier virtual host as an example, your configuration will look something like this: Listen *:443 ServerName secure.example.org ServerAlias web.example.org DocumentRoot /home/username/public_html/

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DirectoryIndex index.php index.html index.htm SSLEngine On SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl.key/server.key SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/server.crt SSLCACertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl.crt/ca.crt

This example uses a wildcard for the IP address in the VirtualHost declaration, which saves you from having to modify your configuration file in the event that your IP address changes but also prevents you from having multiple SSL virtual hosts. In the event that you do need to support more than one SSL virtual host, replace * with the specific IP address that you assign to that host.

NOTE

See the “Troubleshooting” section earlier in the chapter for more information about the Listen directive.

A CA generally provides you with a certificate file to place in ca.crt and sometimes also provides you with a separate file that you will need to reference using a SSLCertificateChainFile directive. 3. Test the Apache configuration and then perform a full restart: $ sudo Syntax $ sudo $ sudo

apache2ctl configtest OK. apache2ctl stop apache2ctl start

4. Browse to https://servername/ and verify the SSL configuration. When using a selfsigned certificate, or one signed by a CA, you are asked whether you want to accept the certificate.

Summary Combining Linux with an Apache Web server, MySQL database, and PHP scripting content (referred to as a LAMP server) makes it possible for you to configure your own full-featured Web server. The instructions in this chapter shows you how to set up Apache to do virtual hosting, add content to a MySQL database, and allow PHP scripting in the content on your server. For added security, this chapter describes how to add your own certificates and troubleshoot problems that might arise with your server.in this part

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E

lectronic mail hardly requires an introduction. Communications made through the original forms of e-mail helped shape the Internet. Widespread availability of access to e-mail and enhancements such as MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, which allow for inclusion of attachments and alternate message formats) have helped to make e-mail the most popular application on the Internet. With a Linux system and a suitable Internet connection, you can easily set up your own mail server for personal or business use. This chapter includes a description of how Internet mail works at the protocol level, and then guides you through the process of setting up a mail server, complete with spam and virus filtering. In the final section, you learn how to secure network communications between clients and your mail server through the use of SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer and Transport Layer Security) protocols. The examples in this chapter are based on a Ubuntu system. (See Chapter 17 for more information about Ubuntu.) However, much of the knowledge you gain from setting up a mail server in Ubuntu applies to other Linux systems as well.

IN THIS CHAPTER Internet e-mail’s inner workings About the system and the software used Preparing your system Installing and configuring the mail server software Testing and troubleshooting Configuring mail clients Securing communications with SSL/TLS

Internet E-Mail’s Inner Workings E-mail messages are generated either by an automated process, such as a form processor on a Web page or an automated notification system, or by an MUA (mail user agent) controlled by an end user. Messages are delivered

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through one of two methods to the software performing the MTA (mail transfer agent) function on a server: ■

SMTP — The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is a network-based protocol that allows for transmission of messages between systems.

■

Local IPC — Inter-process communications are often used instead of SMTP when transferring a message between programs within a system.

Upon receiving a message, the MTA places it in a queue to be processed by an MDA (mail delivery agent). Mail delivery agents come in two varieties: ■

Local MDAs — Deliver messages to mailboxes on the local server. Simple versions copy messages directly to a specified mailbox, while complex implementations can alter messages or delivery parameters based on user-specified rules.

■

Remote MDAs — Deliver messages over the network to remote servers. Full remote MDAs use DNS (the Domain Name System) to determine the mail exchanger hosts for recipient addresses and deliver to the best one available for each. Simple remote MDAs (sometimes called “null clients”) forward messages to a central server to continue the delivery process. Most remote MDAs are capable of either method and will act as configured by the administrator that performed the configuration.

You will often see the term MTA used in reference to the software that performs both MTA and MDA functions. This is a carry-over from older designs that did not separate the functions and is still fairly accurate given the fact that most mail server implementations include a minimum of an MTA, remote MDA, and basic local MDA.

NOTE

When a message reaches its destination server, it is written to the user’s mailbox by the local MDA. From that point, the message may be viewed by the user using one of three methods: ■

Direct access to the mailbox — An MUA (mail user agent) with access to the mailbox file, directly or through a network file system, can read messages from the disk and display them for the user. This is generally a console or Web mail application running on the server.

■

Downloaded to a workstation for local viewing — Most mail users use POP3 (Post Office Protocol, version 3) to download messages to their local computers and view them in applications such as Evolution, Kmail, or Balsa. By default, messages are removed from the server during this process (similar to when you get your “snail mail” from the mailbox).

■

Accessed interactively over the network — Most clients also support viewing messages while they are still on the server, through IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). Unlike POP3, this protocol enables users to access multiple folders on their servers and also allows them to access their messages from anywhere. However, this also creates a heavier burden on the server because it must process (and store) everything that the user decides to keep. Most Web mail applications use IMAP as their backend protocol for accessing mailboxes; this eliminates the need for direct access to the mail files and makes it easier to split functions between systems.

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About the System and the Software Used The mail server configuration described in this chapter is based on the Exim mail transfer agent. Along with Exim, several other components are added for managing the server and checking e-mail contents for spam and viruses: ■

Exim (www.exim.org/) — An MTA written and designed by Philip Hazel at the University of Cambridge, with contributions from many people around the world. The version referred to in this chapter includes the Exiscan-ACL patch (http://duncanthrax.net/exiscanacl/) from Tom Kistner. This patch allows content scanning from within Exim. Because this patch is integrated with Exim, its features are considered part of Exim for the purposes of this chapter.

■

Maildrop (www.courier-mta.org/maildrop/) — A local MDA that is part of the Courier MTA package, but is also available as a standalone program. It is used in this configuration to allow the use of advanced features, such as mailbox quotas and serverside message sorting.

■

Courier IMAP and POP (www.courier-mta.org/imap/) — Like Maildrop, these are parts of the Courier MTA that are also available separately. They were chosen for their easy installation, good performance, and compatibility with the Maildir-format mail directories.

■

ClamAV (www.clamav.net) — An open source virus scanner that detects more than 20,000 viruses, worms, and Trojans. It uses a virus pattern database to identify viruses and includes a program named freshclam that handles updating the database automatically. Like SpamAssassin, ClamAV includes a daemon (clamd), a client (clamdscan), and a second command-line tool that does not use the daemon (clamscan).

■

SpamAssassin (http://spamassassin.apache.org/) — A spam-filtering program written in Perl. It uses a large set of rules to help determine how “spammy” a message looks and assigns a score based on the total of the rule values. For performance reasons, SpamAssassin uses a background daemon called spamd to perform message analysis. Access to this daemon is performed through the spamc client. A spamassassin command that performs the analysis without using spamd is also installed but is not used by either of the example configurations in this chapter.

Preparing Your System You will need a few common items for the mail server configuration covered in this chapter, starting with the proper hardware. A personal mail server can easily run on a Pentium-class computer, although you may notice occasional slowdowns while incoming messages are being scanned. Disk space requirements depend mostly on how much mail you want to have room for, so plan on having a few gigabytes for the operating system (which will leave you plenty of extra, just in case), plus the amount of mail you want to store.

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The operating system should be installed with only the basic set of packages before you begin these examples. Some general information about the installation is provided in Chapter 17. Although the software described in this chapter works even if you aren’t running Ubuntu, the installation methods will not. If you don’t have a spare system to act as a dedicated mail server, you can still use it as your workstation, although this is obviously recommended only for personal use. Your network settings should also be properly configured before you begin installing the mail software. The exact requirements depend on the method by which mail will be delivered to your server: ■

Direct delivery is the method used by most traditional mail servers. DNS records tell remote servers that any mail addressed to your domain should be sent to your server via SMTP.

■

Retrieval from a mail host is also possible using an MRA (mail retrieval agent) such as Fetchmail. This option can be used when you have a mailbox under a shared domain but want to access the mail on your own server. This can also be done in combination with direct delivery if you have both your own domain and mailboxes under shared domains.

NOTE

Configuration of Fetchmail is explained in the “Configuring Mail Clients” section of this chapter.

Configuring DNS for Direct Delivery For direct delivery to function, the SMTP service (TCP port 25) must be accessible to the outside world through a fixed name in DNS. This name will be in the form of an A (Address) record. “A” records allow DNS resolver processes to determine the IP address associated with a specific name and are used by most of the common protocols on the Internet. A typical DNS A record looks something like this: bigserver.example.org

IN

A

10.0.12.16

The first parameter, bigserver.example.org, is the label, and the second parameter is the class (IN for Internet, which is where most DNS records are found). The A indicates the type, and the final parameter is the IP address associated with the label. Once you have your A record, you can direct mail to your server using an MX (Mail eXchanger) record. The A and MX records do not need to be part of the same domain, which allows for much greater flexibility. The following is a sample MX record: widgets.test.

IN

MX

0

bigserver.example.org.

This MX record indicates that mail for any [email protected] should be sent through the server bigserver.example.org. The 0 indicates the numeric priority for this MX record. When more than one MX record exists for a given label, the MX with the lowest priority is tried first. If a temporary error is encountered, the next highest priority mail server is tried, and so on until the list is exhausted. At that point, the sending server will keep trying periodically until the message times out (generally five days). If multiple MX records exist with the same priority, they are tried in a random order.

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NOTE

14

Most mail servers will also fall back on the IP address listed in the A record for a label in the event that no MX records exist. However, it is considered bad practice to rely on this.

In some cases, it may be complicated to establish an A record because your IP address frequently changes. Obviously, this is not suitable for commercial purposes, but there is a workaround that is acceptably reliable for personal use. This is achieved through dynamic DNS services that are available (often at no charge) through a number of different companies. A list of these companies is maintained at http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Servers/Address_ Management/Dynamic_DNS_Services/. Two of the most popular are: ■

ZoneEdit (www.zonedit.com/) — Supported by the ez-ipupdate package.

■

No-IP (www.no-ip.com/) — Supported by the no-ip package.

NOTE

The ez-ipupdate package supports both of these, plus a number of others. View the package description (apt-cache show ez-ipupdate) for more information.

Most of these services will provide you with a hostname under a shared domain at no charge and can also provide a similar service for your own domain for a reasonable fee.

Configuring for Retrieval from a Mail Host The configuration requirements when retrieving mail from a mail host are pretty limited. Your server should be ready to accept mail addressed to localhost and should generally have a name that is unique to it. In the event that a message sent to one of your mailboxes is rejected, the server will need to have a valid hostname by which to identify itself when sending out the DSN (Delivery Status Notification). You must be able to access the server from clients, although you may need to do so only from clients within your network. In either case, you should be familiar with the information about DNS and A records in the previous section.

Installing and Configuring the Mail Server Software Once you have finished with the prerequisites, you will be ready to begin the software installation. The software installation and configuration have been divided into two sections. The first section covers the installation of Exim and Courier. The second section covers the installation of ClamAV and SpamAssassin and configuring Exim to use them to filter incoming mail.

Installing Exim and Courier Installing and configuring Exim and Courier are very straightforward thanks to the quality of the packages that come with Ubuntu. It is possible that, if you have a new Ubuntu system, it already has

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a version of Exim installed. However, you’ll want to use a specific version of Exim that contains features for content scanning. Here are the installation steps: 1. Start by installing this particular Exim package: $ sudo apt-get install exim4-daemon-heavy

2. You need to change a few configuration options from the defaults. Run the following command: $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure — priority=medium exim4-config

You are asked a number of questions. Here’s how to answer them: ■

General type: Select “Mail sent by smarthost; received via SMTP or fetchmail” if you need to send all of your outgoing mail through a server at your Internet service provider. Otherwise, select “Internet site; mail is sent and received directly using SMTP.”

■

Mail name: Enter the name of your mail server here.

■

IP addresses: Clear this box (or leave it empty if it is already so) so that Exim will listen on all local IP addresses.

■

Destinations to accept mail for: Enter any domains that your server will be accepting mail for. Be sure to separate them with colons, and not commas or spaces.

■

Domains to relay for: Enter the names of any domains that your machine will relay mail for, meaning that it can receive mail from them but then passes it on. In most cases, you will not want to enter anything here.

■

Machines to relay for: Enter the IP address ranges of any client machines that you want your server to accept mail from. Another (safer) option is to leave this empty and require clients to authenticate using SMTP authentication. SMTP authentication is best performed over an encrypted connection, so this process is described in the security section at the end of this chapter.

■

Rewrite headers: Select Yes if you want to hide the local mail name in outgoing mail by rewriting the From, Reply-To, Sender, and Return-Path values to a selected system name in outgoing mail. If Yes, you must then set the visible domain name for local users.

■

Split configuration into small files: Selecting Yes causes Exim to split configuration files into about 50 smaller files (instead of one big one) in the /etc/exim4/conf.d directory. Otherwise, the /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template file is used as a single, monolithic file.

3. This configuration uses Maildrop for local mail delivery. Maildrop can deliver messages to the Maildir-style folders that Courier is expecting, and can also handle basic sorting and filtering (as described in the “Configuring Mail Clients” section). This package is not installed by default, so install it as follows: $ sudo apt-get install maildrop

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4. Create Maildir mail directories for every user already on the system. This step must be performed for every user that is already on the system, and must be run as the user because running this command as root will result in Maildrop being unable to write to the folders: $ maildirmake.maildrop $HOME/Maildir $ maildirmake.maildrop -f Trash $HOME/Maildir

5. Create mail directories under /etc/skel. The contents of /etc/skel will be copied to the home directories of any new accounts that you create after the setup is completed: $ sudo maildirmake.maildrop /etc/skel/Maildir $ sudo maildirmake.maildrop -f Trash /etc/skel/Maildir

6. Configure Maildrop to deliver to the Maildir folders instead of mbox files stored in /var/ spool/mail. Use your favorite text editor to edit /etc/maildroprc and uncomment this line at the end of the file: DEFAULT=”$HOME/Maildir/”

7. Exim needs to be configured to deliver messages using Maildrop. Use your preferred text editor to open /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf and change the dc_localdelivery line at the end of the file to read as follows: dc_localdelivery=’maildrop_pipe’

8. Tell Exim to load the most recent configuration change: $ sudo invoke-rc.d exim4 reload

9. Install Courier IMAP and Courier POP: $ sudo apt-get install courier-imap courier-pop

10. Select “no” when asked whether or not the installer should create directories for Web-based administration.

Your system should now be capable of receiving messages. You should also be able to connect to your server using a mail client such as Thunderbird or Evolution. This is a good time to test mail delivery, even if you’re planning to follow the directions in the next section to enable virus and spam filters later. More information about configuring a mail client to connect to your server can be found in the “Configuring Mail Clients” section later in this chapter.

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Installing ClamAV and SpamAssassin Installing and configuring the virus and spam filtering mechanisms is more involved than installing Exim and Courier, but should still go smoothly as long as you follow the steps carefully. Keep in mind, however, that this will add a lot of complexity to the system, so it is a good idea to make sure the Exim mail server is working first so that you don’t have as many things to check if the system doesn’t work as expected. The version of ClamAV included with Ubuntu uses an older virus-scanning engine, as does the Debian system on which Ubuntu is based. Because the updated engine is not likely to make it into an update any time soon because of the Debian upgrade policies, a group of Debian developers has created special sets of the ClamAV packages that are designed for easy installation. For more information about how to use these packages instead of the stock versions, see http://volatile.debian.net/. You may choose to do this from the start, or to add the appropriate URIs to your APT configuration later and do an upgrade. In either case, the configuration process detailed in this section will be about the same. You can also upgrade the database routinely using clamav-freshclam and clamav-getfiles to generate new clamav-data packages.

NOTE

Here’s how to install ClamAV and SpamAssassin, and then configure Exim to use them for scanning messages: 1. Install the ClamAV and SpamAssassin packages: $ sudo apt-get install clamav-daemon clamav-testfiles \ spamassassin spamc

2. Add the clamav user to the Debian-exim group and restart the ClamAV daemon. This allows the ClamAV daemon access to read the files in Exim’s mail queue: $ sudo gpasswd -a clamav Debian-exim $ sudo invoke-rc.d clamav-daemon restart

3. Replace the report template used by SpamAssassin with one that will fit more easily in a message header. Use a text editor to add these lines to the end of the /etc/spamassassin/ local.cf file: clear_report_template report _YESNO_, score=_SCORE_, required=_REQD_, summary= report _SUMMARY_

4. Configure the SpamAssassin background daemon to run automatically and change the OPTIONS line to not attempt to create preference files for users. Change the following options in the /etc/default/spamassassin file: ENABLED=1 OPTIONS=”--max-children 5”

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5. Start the SpamAssassin daemon: $ sudo invoke-rc.d spamassassin start

6. Create the entries that will be included in Exim’s ACL (Access Control List) for scanning message data. Use a text editor to create a file named /etc/exim4/acl_check_data_ local that contains the following: deny message = $malware_name detected in message demime = * malware = * warn message = X-Spam-Score: $spam_score ($spam_bar) condition = ${if <{$message_size}{80k}{1}{0}} spam = nobody:true/defer_ok warn message = X-Spam-Status: $spam_report condition = ${if <{$message_size}{80k}{1}{0}} spam = nobody:true/defer_ok deny message = Spam score too high ($spam_score) condition = ${if <{$message_size}{80k}{1}{0}} spam = nobody:true/defer_ok condition = ${if >{$spam_score_int}{120}{1}{0}}

The first block rejects messages that contain viruses or other malware, and the second and third add headers to messages indicating whether or not SpamAssassin considers them spam. The final block checks $spam_score_int (the spam score multiplied by 10) and rejects the message if it is greater than 120. The /defer_ok in the last three blocks tells Exim that it is okay to continue processing in the event that the SpamAssassin daemon could not be contacted. You can remove it if you would prefer to have the server return a temporary failure code in such cases. You can also add /defer_ok to the end of the malware = * line if you want processing to continue in the event that a message cannot be scanned by ClamAV. 7. Tell Exim which virus scanner to use and how to connect to SpamAssassin. Use a text editor to create a file named /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/10_exim4-exiscan_acl_ options that contains the following: av_scanner = clamd:/var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl spamd_address = 127.0.0.1 783 CHECK_DATA_LOCAL_ACL_FILE = CONFDIR/acl_check_data_local

8. Tell Exim to load the new configuration: $ sudo invoke-rc.d exim4 reload

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All messages transmitted through your server should now be checked for viruses using ClamAV. Additionally, messages less than 80 kilobytes will also be checked using SpamAssassin. This is a good time to test the configuration again. Fixes for the problems that you are most likely to encounter can be found in the next section.

Testing and Troubleshooting This section contains some generic troubleshooting tips, plus specific information about some common errors and how to fix them.

Checking Logs All logging information for Exim is written to three log files that can be found in /var/log/ exim4: mainlog, rejectlog, and paniclog. The first of these, mainlog, contains log entries for all events, including normal events such as message deliveries. The second, rejectlog, contains entries for rejected messages. The third, paniclog, contains information about configuration or other errors, and is usually empty unless a serious problem has occurred. Every entry in these files generally starts with a timestamp. Entries in the mainlog will often include a string of 15 characters, such as 1E9PTu-0003jN-QY. This is the message identifier for the message that the log entry is related to. Immediately after the message identifier there will generally be a two-character string. Table 14-1 details what those strings mean.

TABLE 14-1

Exim Log File Messages Symbol

Description

Explanation

<=

Message arrival

These entries show messages coming into Exim, generally through SMTP or local IPC.

=>

Message delivery

These entries show message deliveries, whether they are to a local mailbox or to a remote host using SMTP or some other transport.

->

Additional addresses in message delivery

These entries show delivery to additional addresses for messages that have already been delivered to another recipient (and logged with an => entry).

**

Delivery failure

These entries show permanent delivery errors. Errors such as these indicate that the message has been removed from the mail queue and in most cases a DSN (Delivery Status Notification) has been generated and sent to the original message sender.

==

Delivery deferral

These entries show temporary delivery problems. The system will continue to retry sending these until delivery succeeds, or a permanent failure occurs as a result of a retry timeout.

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Entries associated with a message that has not been accepted into the queue will not have the message identifier or two-character flags. Some samples of these types of entries are included in the next section. Logging information for the Courier IMAP and POP daemons is saved to /var/log/mail.log. Normal entries include LOGIN and LOGOUT messages. DISCONNECTED messages generally indicate that a connection was broken before a normal logout was performed. The tail utility is useful for watching for new entries to a log. Use the -f switch to instruct tail to watch for new entries and display them to the screen as they are written to the log. For example: tail -f /var/log/exim4/mainlog.

NOTE

Common Errors (and How to Fix Them) There are two common types of problems that you will encounter with your server: messages being rejected or not delivered by Exim and login failures when connecting to Courier.

Messages Rejected by Exim The first places to check when messages are rejected by Exim are the mainlog and rejectlog files. Here are examples of some common errors and tips for fixing them: ■

Relaying Denied — The following error indicates that the client sending the message is not recognized as a client by Exim and that the recipient domain is not in the list of local or relay domains: H=sample.client [10.0.12.16] F=<[email protected]> rejected RCPT : relay not permitted

If the client IP address will not change frequently or is in part of a trusted range of IP addresses, you can add them by running the following: $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure — priority=medium exim4-config

The same command can also be used to add the recipient domain as a local or relay domain. Do not add client IP ranges unless you trust all of the users that can connect from those addresses. Likewise, do not add a domain as a relay domain unless you know the owner of the domain and have made arrangements to relay mail for them. Doing either of these incorrectly could open your server up as a relay that can be used by spammers to attack other sites.

CAUTION

If the client IP address is likely to change frequently and is not part of a trusted range, you should either configure the client to use a mail server that is local to it or configure SMTP authentication in Exim. More information about enabling SMTP authentication can be found on your server in /usr/share/doc/exim4-base/README.Debian.html and /etc/exim4/conf.d/auth/30_exim4-config_examples.

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The Courier authdaemon examples in 30_exim4-config_examples can be enabled, allowing Exim to use that facility for authentication and negating the need to set up a different mechanism. In order for it to work, however, you will need to add the Debian-exim user to the daemon group (sudo gpasswd -a Debian-exim daemon) and restart Exim.

NOTE

■

ClamAV Misconfiguration — The following error indicates that the ClamAV daemon could not read the temporary message file: 1E9PDq-0003Lo-BY malware acl condition: clamd: ClamAV returned /var/spool/exim4/scan/1E9PDq-0003Lo-BY: Access denied. ERROR

Make sure you added clamav to the Debian-exim group and restarted ClamAV, as shown in the installation section. ■

ClamAV Unavailable — This error usually indicates that the ClamAV daemon is not running: 1E9PGL-0003MX-38 malware acl condition: clamd: unable to connect to UNIX socket /var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl (No such file or directory)

Start it using invoke-rc.d clamav-daemon start. You can also use the clamdscan program to test the daemon, as follows: $ sudo clamdscan /usr/share/clamav-testfiles/clam.exe /usr/share/clamav-testfiles/clam.exe: ClamAV-Test-File FOUND ----------- SCAN SUMMARY ----------Infected files: 1 Time: 0.001 sec (0 m 0 s)

Messages Not Delivered by Exim In some cases, messages will be accepted by the server but will not be deliverable. Some of these errors are considered temporary failures and will not generate a bounced message until the retry timer runs out. The error that you are most likely to see will look something like this in the mainlog file: 1E9PTu-0003jN-QY == [email protected] R=local_user T=maildrop_pipe defer (0): Child process of maildrop_pipe transport returned 75 (could mean temporary error) from command: /usr/bin/maildrop

This error indicates that Exim attempted to pass the message to Maildrop, but Maildrop returned an error code. The most likely cause is a missing Maildir directory, or a Maildir directory that is owned by the wrong user. The next section shows how to detect and fix these problems.

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Login Failures When Connecting to Courier Aside from genuine password errors (which can be remedied by entering the correct password in the mail client), there are also a few other conditions that can result in login failures. Some of these conditions will also result in temporary delivery problems. A normal login failure will result in a log entry that looks similar to this: courierpop3login: LOGIN FAILED, ip=[::ffff:1.2.3.4]

In this case, a user from IP 1.2.3.4 entered the wrong username or password. Several of the other errors that may occur will not be logged to the mail log, which means that you may have to test them by connecting manually to the POP3 service (from the mail server, or from a remote machine) and sending a valid username and password. This example shows how to connect to the POP3 service from a shell prompt on the mail server: $ telnet localhost 110 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost.localdomain. Escape character is ‘^]’. +OK Hello there. USER username +OK Password required. PASS password

The response you receive from the server should be similar to one of the following: ■

+OK logged in — This is a normal response and should mean that there are no problems with the service.

■

-ERR Maildir: No such file or directory — This error indicates that the user’s account does not have a Maildir directory. Use the maildirmake command to create it, as shown in the “Installing Exim and Courier” section.

■

-ERR Maildir: Permission denied — This error indicates that the user’s Maildir directory cannot be read or belongs to the wrong user. To remedy this, run this command as root: $ sudo chown -R username:groupname ~username/Maildir

Be sure to replace username and groupname with the login name and primary group of the user. In a stock Ubuntu or Debian system, the primary group name will be the same as the username. ■

-ERR Login failed — If you’re certain that you are using the correct username and password, it could be that the Courier authdaemon service is not running. Try to start (or restart) it using this command: # invoke-rc.d courier-authdaemon restart

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Configuring Mail Clients Any mail client with support for POP3 or IMAP should be able to access mail from your server. Just use the name of your server in the mail server settings, and follow the troubleshooting steps in the previous section if something doesn’t work.

CROSS-REF

You can find more information about mail clients for Linux in Chapter 6.

Configuring Fetchmail Fetchmail is an MRA (mail retrieval agent) that you can use to pull mail from a remote account to your new server. It is configured in the $HOME/.fetchmailrc file and is very easy to set up. To pull mail to your server, log in as the user that the mail should go to, and then configure and run it from there. Run Fetchmail as the user for whom the mail is being retrieved. You should never run it as root. If you’re doing a complex setup in which you retrieve mail from a single mailbox that needs to be sorted for multiple users, see the fetchmail man page for information about multidrop mailboxes.

NOTE

A .fetchmailrc file can be as simple as this: poll mailserver.yourisp.example protocol pop3 username “foo”

If you have more than one mail server, you can add it as an additional line. If the server from which you are pulling mail supports IMAP, you can use imap instead of pop3. Other options that you can have are password=your password and ssl. Storing the password in the file enables you to run Fetchmail without entering a password, and the ssl option tells Fetchmail to use an SSL/TLS connection to the server. Your .fetchmailrc file should not be readable by others, and Fetchmail will generally complain if it is. To set the permissions so that only you can read it, run chmod 0600 $HOME/.fetchmailrc.

NOTE

Running Fetchmail is as simple as typing $ fetchmail

If you want to have Fetchmail run in the background, you can use the --daemon (or -d) flag with a parameter telling it how often (in seconds) to poll the servers: $ fetchmail — daemon 300

To have Fetchmail automatically start when the system boots, add this to your crontab file: @reboot

NOTE

/usr/bin/fetchmail --daemon 300

Fetchmail cannot prompt for passwords when run in this manner, which means that you must store the passwords in .fetchmailrc for this to work.

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If you haven’t configured a crontab file before, setting it up can be as easy as entering the following three commands: $ cat > mycron @reboot /usr/bin/fetchmail — daemon 300 $ crontab mycron

Configuring Web-Based Mail If you’re running an IMAP server, you can offer Web-based access by installing SquirrelMail (http://squirrelmail.org/, also found in the squirrelmail package). Start by configuring your system as a LAMP server (see Chapter 13), and then install and configure the appsropriate package.

Securing Communications with SSL/TLS Because communication between mail clients and the server often contains sensitive information such as passwords, it is usually desirable to enable SSL/TLS encryption. Here’s how to enable SSL/ TLS in Exim and Courier: 1. Install the Courier daemons with SSL/TLS support: $ sudo apt-get install courier-imap-ssl courier-pop-ssl

2. Third-party CA certificates are provided on the ca-certificates package. This will be referenced in the configuration, so install it, too: $ sudo apt-get install ca-certificates

Debconf asks you whether you want to trust the CA certificates by default. In most cases, you want to select Yes. 3. If you are going to be using a certificate from a CA that is not already recognized (this is generally only true if you are running your own CA), place the CA public certificate in its own file in /etc/ssl/certs/ and update the certificate database: $ sudo update-ca-certificates

4. Generate the private key and certificate signing request, as described in Chapter 13. The best location for these files is in /etc/ssl/private/. Here’s an example: $ # # # # #

sudo su cd /etc/exim4 openssl genrsa -out mail.key 1024 chmod 640 mail.key openssl req -new -key mail.key -out mail.csr chown root:Debian-exim mail.key

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5. Get your CSR (Certificate Signing Request) signed and place the certificate in /etc/mail/ private/mail.crt. Or, to use a self-signed certificate, do the following: # cd /etc/exim4 # openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -sha1 \ -days 365 -key mail.key -out mail.crt # chmod 640 mail.crt # chown root:Debian-exim mail.crt Some remote servers will refuse to send messages to your server if your certificate is not signed by a CA that they recognize. Also, make sure the common name (cn) attribute on your certificate matches the name of the server in DNS.

CAUTION

6. Concatenate the private key and certificate into a single file for Courier: # cd /etc/courier # cat /etc/exim4/mail.key /etc/exim4/mail.crt > mail.pem # chmod 600 mail.pem

7. Enable SSL/TLS in the Courier IMAP and POP daemons by editing both /etc/courier/ imapd-ssl and /etc/courier/pop3d-ssl and replacing the values for TLS_CERTFILE and TLS_TRUSTCERTS with the following: TLS_CERTFILE=/etc/courier/mail.pem TLS_TRUSTCERTS=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.pem

8. Tell Exim where it can find the private key and certificate, and enable TLS. Create a file named /etc/exim4/conf.d/main/12_exim4-config_local_tlsoptions containing the following: MAIN_TLS_CERTIFICATE = CONFDIR/mail.crt MAIN_TLS_PRIVATEKEY = CONFDIR/mail.key MAIN_TLS_ENABLE = 1

9. Restart Exim: $ sudo invoke-rc.d exim4 restart

Your server should now support SSL/TLS when communicating with SMTP, POP, and IMAP clients.

Summary Using Linux and a good Internet connection, you can set up and maintain your own mail server. Preparing your computer to become a mail server includes configuring your network connection, setting up delivery and retrieval methods, and adding required software packages. This chapter describes how to install, configure, and troubleshoot the Exim MTA. Exim can be used in tandem with spam filtering software (such as SpamAssassin) and virus scanning software (such as ClamAV). Methods for securing your mail server include configuring support for SSL/TLS encryption.

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haring printers is a good way to save money and make your printing more efficient. Very few people need to print all the time, but when they do want to print something, they usually need it quickly. Setting up a print server can save money by eliminating the need for a printer at every workstation. Some of those savings can be used to buy printers that can output more pages per minute or have higher-quality output. You can attach printers to your Linux system to make them available to users of that system (standalone printing) or to other computers on the network as a shared printer. You can also configure your Linux printer as a remote CUPS or Samba printer. With Samba, you are emulating Windows printing services, which is pretty useful given the abundance of Windows client systems.

IN THIS CHAPTER Understanding printing in Linux Setting up printers Using printing commands Managing document printing Sharing printers

This chapter describes configuring and using printers on Linux systems with various desktop environments in use. Some of the details may vary from one distribution to another, but the information included here should work well for the more commonly used distributions. This chapter focuses on the Common UNIX Printing Service (CUPS), which is the recommended print service for the majority of Linux installations. Examples in this chapter use the Printer Configuration options in the GNOME and K Desktop environments. Once a local printer is configured, users on your system should be able to easily print Web pages, documents, or images from desktop application. From the command line, print commands such as lpr are available for carrying out printing. Commands also exist for querying print queues (lpq), manipulating print queues (lpc), and removing print queues (lprm). A local printer can also be shared as a print server for users on other computers on your network.

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Common UNIX Printing Service CUPS has become the standard for printing from Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. It was designed to meet today’s needs for standardized printer definitions and sharing on Internet Protocol-based networks (as most computer networks are today). Nearly every Linux distribution today comes with CUPS as its printing service. Here are some of the service’s features: ■

IPP — CUPS is based on the Internet Printing Protocol (www.pwg.org/ipp), a standard that was created to simplify how printers can be shared over IP networks. In the IPP model, printer servers and clients who want to print can exchange information about the model and features of a printer using HTTP (that is, Web content) protocol. A server can also broadcast the availability of a printer so a printing client can easily find a list of locally available printers.

■

Drivers — CUPS also standardized how printer drivers are created. The idea was to have a common format that could be used by printer manufacturers so that a driver could work across all different types of UNIX systems. That way, a manufacturer had to create the driver only once to work for Linux, Mac OS X, and a variety of UNIX derivatives.

■

Printer classes — You can use printer classes to create multiple print server entries that point to the same printer or one print server entry that points to multiple printers. In the first case, multiple entries can each allow different options (such as pointing to a particular paper tray or printing with certain character sizes or margins). In the second case, you can have a pool of printers so that printing is distributed, decreasing the occurrence of congested print queues often caused by a malfunctioning printer or a printer that is dealing with very large documents.

■

Printer browsing — With printer browsing, client computers can see any CUPS printers on your LAN with browsing enabled. As a result, clients can simply select the printers they want to use from the printer names broadcast on the LAN, without needing to know in advance what the printers are named and where they are connected. You can turn off this feature if you don’t want others on the LAN to see your printer.

■

Printer classes — Printers can be grouped together into classes. Clients printing to a particular print class have their print jobs sent to the first available printer, instead of having to wait for a particular printer to become available. CUPS also supports implicit classes, which are print classes that are formed by merging identical network printers automatically.

■

UNIX print commands — To integrate into Linux and other UNIX environments, CUPS offers versions of standard commands for printing and managing printers that have been traditionally offered with UNIX systems.

Many Linux distributions come with simplified methods of configuring CUPS printers. Here are a few examples: ■

In Fedora, CentOS, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, the Printer Configuration window (system-config-printer command) enables you to configure printers that use the CUPS facility.

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■

In Ubuntu, the same Printer Configuration window (select System ➪ Administration ➪ Printing to open it) lets you add, delete, and manage printers.

■

In SUSE, the YaST facility includes a printer configuration module. From the YaST Control Center, select Hardware ➪ Printer.

15

For distributions that don’t have their own printer configuration tools, there are several ways to configure CUPS using tools that aren’t specific to a Linux distribution. Here are a couple of them: ■

Configuring CUPS from a browser — CUPS offers a Web-based interface for adding and managing printers. You can access this service by typing localhost:631 from a Web browser on the computer running the CUPS service. (See the section “Using Web-Based CUPS Administration,” later in this chapter.) The KDE desktop comes with a tool for managing CUPS server features. To launch the KDE CUPS Server Configuration window, type /usr/bin/cupsdconf from a Terminal window.

■

Configuring CUPS manually — You also can configure CUPS manually (that is, edit the configuration files and start the cupsd daemon manually). Configuration files for CUPS are contained in the /etc/cups directory. In particular, you might be interested in the cupsd.conf file, which identifies permission, authentication, and other information for the printer daemon, and printers.conf, which identifies addresses and options for configured printers. Use the classes.conf file to define local printer classes.

You can print to CUPS from non-UNIX systems as well. For example, you can use a PostScript printer driver to print directly from Windows XP to your CUPS server. You can use CUPS without modification by configuring the XP computer with a PostScript driver that uses http://printservername:631printers/targetPrinter as its printing port.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

To use CUPS, you need to have it installed. Most Linux distributions let you choose to add CUPS during the initial system install or will simply add CUPS by default. If CUPS was not added when you first installed your Linux distribution, check your original installation medium (DVD or CD) to see if it is there for you to install now. Fedora, Slackware, Ubuntu, SUSE, and many other Linux distributions have CUPS on the first CD or DVD of their installation sets.

Setting Up Printers While it is usually best to use the printer administration tools specifically built for your distribution, many Linux systems simply rely on the tools that come with the CUPS software package. This section explores how to use CUPS Web-based administration tools that come with every Linux distribution and then examines the printer configuration tool system-config-printer, which comes with Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems to enable you to set up printers.

Using Web-Based CUPS Administration CUPS offers its own Web-based administrative tool for adding, deleting, and modifying printer configurations on your computer. The CUPS print service (using the cupsd daemon) listens on port 631 to provide access to the CUPS Web-based administrative interface.

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If CUPS is already running on your computer, you can immediately use CUPS Web-based administration from your Web browser. To see if CUPS is running and start setting up your printers, open a Web browser on the local computer and type the following into its location box: http://localhost:631/admin

A prompt for a valid login name and password may appear. If so, type the root login name and the root user’s password, and then click OK. A screen similar to the one shown in Figure 15-1 appears.

FIGURE 15-1 CUPS provides a Web-based administration tool.

By default, Web-based CUPS administration is available only from the local host. To access Webbased CUPS administration from another computer, you must change the /admin section in the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. As recommended in the text of this file, you should limit access to CUPS administration from the Web. The following example includes an Allow line to permit access from a host from IP address 10.0.0.5. You must also add a Listen line, so your CUPS service will listen for requests outside of the local host. In this example, a Listen line is configured to listen on your external interface to your LAN from address 10.0.0.1. Listen localhost:631 Listen 10.0.0.1:631

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AuthType Basic AuthClass System Order Deny, Allow Deny from All Allow From 127.0.0.1 Allow From 10.0.0.5

From the computer at address 10.0.0.5, you would type (substituting the CUPS server’s name or IP address for localhost): http://localhost:631/admin

When prompted, enter the root username and password. For Ubuntu, you can enter your regular user name and password (assuming you have sudo privileges). Now, with the Admin screen displayed, here’s how to set up a printer: 1. Click the Add Printer button. The Add New Printer screen appears. 2. Type a Name, Location, and Description for the printer and click Continue. 3. Select the device to which the printer is connected. The printer can be connected locally to a parallel, SCSI, serial, or USB port directly on the computer. Alternatively, you can select a network connection type for Apple printers (appSocket/HP JetDirect), Internet Printing Protocol (http or ipp), or a Windows printer (using SAMBA or SMB). 4. If prompted for more information, you may need to further describe the connection to the printer. For example, you may need to enter the baud rate and parity for a serial port, or you might be asked for the network address for an IPP or Samba printer. 5. Select the make of the print driver (if you don’t see the manufacturer of your printer listed, choose PostScript for a PostScript printer or HP for a PCL printer). For the make you choose, you will be able to select a specific model. 6. If the printer is added successfully, the next page you see shows a link to the description of that printer. Click that link. From the new printer page, you can print a test page or modify the printer configuration.

After you are able to print from CUPS, you can return to the CUPS Web-based administration page and do further work with your printers. Here are a few examples of what you can do: ■

List print jobs — Click Jobs to see what print jobs are currently active from any of the printers configured for this server. Click Show Completed Jobs to see information about jobs that are already printed.

■

Create a printer class — Click Classes. Then click Add Class and identify a name and location for a printer class. Click Continue. Then, from the list of Printers configured on your server, select the ones to go into this class.

■

Cancel a print job — If you print a 100-page job by mistake or if the printer is spewing out junk, the cancel feature can be very handy. Click Jobs, and then click Show Active Jobs

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to see what print jobs are currently in the queue for the printer. Click the Cancel Job button next to the print job you want to cancel. ■

View printers — You can click the Printers link from the top of any of the CUPS Webbased administration pages to view the printers you have configured. For each printer that appears, you can click Stop Printer (to stop the printer from printing but still accept print jobs for the queue), Reject Jobs (to not accept any further print jobs for the moment), or Print Test Page (to print a page). Figure 15-2 shows the Printers page.

FIGURE 15-2 Print test pages or temporarily stop printing from the Printers page.

Using the Printer Configuration Window If you are using Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL, or other Red Hat–based systems, you can use the Printer Configuration window to set up your printers. In fact, I recommend that you use it instead of CUPS Web administration because the resulting printer configuration files are tailored to work with the way the CUPS service is started on those systems. To install a printer from your GNOME desktop in Ubuntu or Fedora, open the Printer Configuration window by selecting System ➪ Administration ➪ Printing or as root user by typing system-configprinter. This tool lets you add and delete printers and edit printer properties. It also lets you send test pages to those printers to make sure they are working properly.

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The key here is that you are configuring printers that are managed by your print daemon (cupsd for the CUPS service). After a printer is configured, users on your local system can use it. You can refer to the “Configuring Print Servers” section to learn how to make the server available to users from other computers on your network. The printers that you set up can be connected directly to your computer (as on a parallel port) or to another computer on the network (for example, from another UNIX system or Windows system).

Configuring Local Printers with the Printer Configuration Window Add a local printer (in other words, a printer connected directly to your computer) with the Printer Configuration window using the following procedure. (See the sidebar “Choosing a Printer” if you don’t yet have a printer.) Connect your printer before starting this procedure. This enables the printer software to autodetect the printer’s location and to immediately test the printer when you have finished adding it.

TIP

Choosing a Printer

A

n excellent list of printers supported in Linux is available from the Linux Foundation site at www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting (select the OpenPrinting Database link). I strongly recommend that you visit that site before you purchase a printer to work with Linux. In addition to showing supported printers, the site has a page describing how to choose a printer for use with Linux: www.linuxfoundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/SuggestedPrinters In terms of general guidance when looking for a Linux printer, the PostScript language is the preferred format for Linux and UNIX printing and has been for many years. Every major word-processing product that runs on Fedora, SUSE, Debian, and UNIX systems supports PostScript printing on some level, so a printer that natively supports PostScript printing is sure to work in Linux. If you get a PostScript printer and it is not explicitly shown in the list of supported printers, simply select the PostScript filter when you install the printer locally. No special drivers are needed. Your next best option is to choose a printer that supports PCL. In either case, make sure that PostScript or PCL is implemented in the printer hardware and not in the Windows driver. Avoid printers that are referred to as Winprinters. These printers use nonstandard printing interfaces (those other than PostScript or PCL). Support for these low-end printers is hit or miss. For example, some low-end HP DeskJet printers use the pnm2ppa driver to print documents in Printing Performance Architecture (PPA) format. Some Lexmark printers use the pbm217k driver to print. Although drivers are available for many of these Winprinters, many of them are not fully supported. Ghostscript may also support your printer; if it does, you can use it to do your printing. Ghostscript (found at www.ghostscript.com) is a free PostScript-interpreter program. It can convert PostScript content to output that can be interpreted by a variety of printers. Both GNU and Aladdin Ghostscript drivers are available. Although the latest Aladdin drivers are not immediately released under the GPL, you can use older Aladdin drivers that are licensed under the GNU.

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Adding a Local Printer To add a local printer from Ubuntu, Fedora, and several other Linux systems, follow these steps: 1. Select System ➪ Administration ➪ Printing from the Desktop menu or type the following as root user from a Terminal window: # system-config-printer &

The Printer Configuration window appears. 2. Click New Printer. A New Printer window appears. 3. If the printer you want to configure is detected, simply select it and click Forward. If it is not detected, choose the device to which the printer is connected (LPT #1 and Serial Port #1 are the first parallel and serial ports, respectively) and click Forward. (Type /usr/sbin/lpinfo -v | less in a shell to see all available ports.) You are asked to identify the printer’s driver. 4. To use an installed driver for your printer, choose Select Printer From Database, and then choose the manufacturer of your printer. As an alternative, you could select Provide PPD File and supply your own PPD file (for example, if you have a printer that is not supported in Linux and you have a driver that was supplied with the printer). PPD stands for PostScript Printer Description. Click Forward to see a list of printer models from which you can choose. If you have a printer that works in Windows, but doesn’t work in Linux, refer back to the disk (probably a CD) that was included with the printer. Choose Provide PPD File, and then look for the PPD file on that disk to test that printer driver with Linux.

COMING FROM

WINDOWS

If your printer doesn’t appear on the list but supports PCL (HP’s Printer Control Language), try selecting one of the HP printers (such as HP LaserJet). If your printer supports PostScript, select PostScript printer from the list. Selecting Raw Print Queue enables you to send documents to the printer that are already formatted for that printer type.

TIP

5. With your printer model selected, click the Printer, Driver, or PPD button at the bottom of the screen. In many cases, you will see useful information from the Linux Printing Database about how your printer is configured and how to tune it further. Click Forward to continue. 6. Add the following information and click Forward: ■

Printer Name — Add the name you want to give to identify the printer. The name must begin with a letter, but after the initial letter, it can contain a combination of letters, numbers, dashes (-), and underscores ( _). For example, an HP printer on a computer named maple could be named hp-maple.

■

Description — Add a few words describing the printer, such as its features (an HP LaserJet 2100M with PCL and PS support).

■

Location — Add some words that describe the printer’s location (for example, “In Room 205 under the coffeepot”).

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7. When the message that you are about to create a new printer appears, click Apply. The new printer entry appears in the Printer Configuration window, as shown in Figure 15-3. 8. If you want the printer to be your default printer, click the Make Default Printer button. As you add other printers, you can change the default printer by selecting the one you want and clicking the Make Default Printer button. 9. Printing should be working at this point. To make sure, select the printer you just added from the left column. Then click the Print Test Page button. (If you want to share this printer with other computers on your network, refer to the “Configuring Print Servers” section of this chapter.) FIGURE 15-3 Add printers connected locally or remotely with the Printer Configuration window.

Editing a Local Printer After selecting the printer you want to configure, choose from the following tabs to change its configuration: ■

Settings — The Description, Location, Device URI, and Make and Model information you created earlier are displayed on this tab. In addition to the original options added, the following describes how to change other options: ■

Make Default Printer — Click this button to choose the printer as the default printer.

■

Print Test Page — Although this isn’t technically an option, clicking this button lets you send a test page to the printer.

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■

Policies. Click the Policies tab. From this tab, you can set the following items: ■

State — Select check boxes to indicate whether the printer will print jobs that are in the queue (Enabled), accept new jobs for printing (Accepting Jobs), or be available to be shared with other computers that can communicate with your compter (Shared). You also must select Server Settings and click the “Share published printers connected to this system” check box before the printer will accept print jobs from other computers.

■

Policies — In case of error, the stop-printer selection causes all printing to that printer to stop. You can also select to have the job discarded (abort-job) or retried (retry-job) in the event of an error condition.

■

Banner — Add banner pages at the beginning or end of a job. This is good practice for a printer that is shared by many people. The banner page helps you sort who gets which print job. The standard banner page shows the ID of the print job, the title of the file, the user that requested the print job, and any billing information associated with it.

■

Access control. If your printer is a shared printer, you can select this tab to create a list that either allows users access to the printer (with all others denied) or denies users access to the printer (with all others allowed).

■

Printer Options. Click Printer Options to set defaults for options related to the printer driver. The available options are different for different printers. Many of these options can be overridden when someone prints a document. Here are a few of the options you might want to set: ■

Watermark — Several Watermark settings are available to enable you to add and change watermarks on your printed pages. By default, Watermark and Overlay are off (None). By selecting Watermark (behind the text) or Overlay (over the text), you can set the other Watermark settings to determine how watermarks and overlays are done. Watermarks can go on every page (All) or only the first page (First Only). Select Watermark Text to choose what words are used for the watermark or overlay (Draft, Copy, Confidential, Final, and so on). You can then select the font type, size, style, and intensity of the watermark or overlay.

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Resolution Enhancement — You can use the printer’s current settings or choose to turn resolution enhancement on or off.

■

Page Size — The default is U.S. letter size, but you can also ask the printer to print legal size, envelopes, ISO A4 standard or several other page sizes.

■

Media Source — Choose which tray to print from. Select Tray 1 to insert pages manually.

■

Levels of Gray — Choose to use the printer’s current levels of gray or have enhanced or standard gray levels turned on.

■

Resolution — Select the default printing resolution (such as 300, 600, or 1,200 dots per inch). Higher resolutions result in better quality but take longer to print.

■

EconoMode — Either use the printer’s current setting or choose a mode where you save toner or one where you have the highest possible quality.

Job Options — Click the Job Options tab to set common default options that will be used for this printer if the application printing the job doesn’t already set them. These include Common Options (number of copies, orientiation, scale to fit, and pages per side), Image Options (scaling, saturation, hue, and gamma), and Text Options (characters/inch, lines/ inch, and margin settings).

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15

For a description of other driver options, refer to the CUPS Software User Manual (/usr/share/doc/cups-*/sum.html) under the Standard Printer Options heading.

NOTE

Click Apply when you are satisfied with the changes you made to the local printer.

Configuring Remote Printers To use a printer that is available on your network, you must identify that printer to your Linux system. Supported remote printer connections include Networked CUPS (IPP) printers, Networked UNIX (LPD) printers, Networked Windows (SAMBA) printers, and JetDirect printers. (Of course, both CUPS and UNIX print servers can be run from Linux systems as well as other UNIX systems.) In each case, you need a network connection from your Linux system to the servers to which those printers are connected. To use a remote printer requires that someone set up that printer on the remote server computer. See the section “Configuring Print Servers” later in this chapter for information on how to do that on your Linux server. Use the Printer Configuration window to configure each of the remote printer types: 1. From the Desktop panel, select System ➪ Administration ➪Printing. 2. Click New Printer. The New Printer window appears. 3. Depending on the type of ports you have on your computer, select one of the following: ■

LPT #1 — For a printer connected to your parallel port

■

Serial Port #1 — For a printer connected to your serial port

■

AppleSocket/HP JetDirect — For a JetDirect printer

■

Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) — For a CUPS or other IPP printer

■

LPD/LPR Host or Printer — For a UNIX printer

■

Windows Printer via SAMBA — For a Windows system printer

Continue with the steps in whichever of the following sections is appropriate.

Adding a Remote CUPS Printer If you chose to add a CUPS (IPP) printer from the Printer Configuration window, you must add the following information to the window that appears: ■

Hostname — Hostname of the computer to which the printer is attached (or otherwise accessible). This can be an IP address or TCP/IP hostname for the computer. (The TCP/IP name is accessible from your /etc/hosts file or through a DNS name server.)

■

Printername — Printer name on the remote CUPS print server. CUPS supports printer instances, which allows each printer to have several sets of options. If the remote CUPS printer is configured this way, you are able to choose a particular path to a printer, such as hp/300dpi or hp/1200dpi. A slash character separates the print queue name from the printer instance.

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Complete the rest of the procedure as you would for a local printer (see the “Adding a Local Printer” section earlier in this chapter).

Adding a Remote UNIX Printer If you chose to add a UNIX printer (LPD/LPR) from the Printer Configuration window, you must add the following information to the window that appears: ■

Hostname — Hostname of the computer to which the printer is attached (or otherwise accessible). This is the IP address or TCP/IP name for the computer (the TCP/IP name is accessible from your /etc/hosts file or through a DNS name server). Select the Probe button to search for the host.

■

Printer name — Printer name on the remote UNIX computer.

Complete the rest of the procedure as you would for a local printer (see the “Adding a Local Printer” section earlier in this chapter). If the print job you send to test the printer is rejected, the print server computer may not have allowed you access to the printer. Ask the remote computer’s administrator to add your hostname to the /etc/lpd.perms file. (Type lpq -Pprinter to see the status of your print job.)

TIP

Adding a Windows (SMB) Printer Enabling your computer to access an SMB printer (the Windows printing service) involves adding an entry for the printer in the Select Connection window. When you choose to add a Windows printer to the Printer Configuration window (Windows Printer via SAMBA), you are presented with a list of computers on your network that have been detected as offering SMB services (file and/or printing service). At that point, here is how you can configure the printer: 1. Select the server or group (click the arrow next to its name so that it points down). 2. Select the printer from the list of available printers shown. 3. Fill in the username and password needed to access the SMB printer. Click Verify to check that you can authenticate to the server. 4. Click Forward to continue.

Alternatively, you can identify a server that does not appear on the list of servers. Type the information needed to create an SMB URI that contains the following information: ■

Workgroup — The workgroup name assigned to the SMB server. Using the workgroup name isn’t necessary in all cases.

■

Server — NetBIOS name or IP address for the computer, which may or may not be the same as its TCP/IP name. To translate this name into the address needed to reach the

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SMB host, Samba checks several places where the name may be assigned to an IP address. Samba checks the following (in the order shown) until it finds a match: the local /etc/ hosts file, the local /etc/lmhosts file, a WINS server on the network, and responses to broadcasts on each local network interface to resolve the name. ■

Share — Name under which the printer is shared with the remote computer. It may be different from the name by which local users of the SMB printer know the printer.

■

User — Username is required by the SMB server system to give you access to the SMB printer. A username is not necessary if you are authenticating the printer based on sharelevel rather than user-level access control. With share-level access, you can add a password for each shared printer or file system.

■

Password — Password associated with the SMB username or the shared resource, depending on the kind of access control being used.

CAUTION

When you enter a User and Password for SMB, that information is stored unencrypted in the /etc/cups/printers.conf file. Be sure that the file remains readable only

by root.

The following is an example of the SMB URI you could add to the SMB:// box: jjones:my9passswd@FSTREET/NS1/hp

The URI shown here identifies the username (jjones), the user’s password (my9passswd), the workgroup (FSTREET), the server (NS1), and the printer queue name (hp). Complete the rest of the procedure as you would for a local printer (see the “Adding a Local Printer” section earlier in this chapter). If everything is set up properly, you can use the standard lpr command to print the file to the printer. Using this example, employ the following form for printing: $ cat file1.ps | lpr -P NS1-PS If you are receiving failure messages, make sure that the computer to which you are printing is accessible. For the preceding NS1-PS printer example, you can type smbclient -L NS1 -U jjones. Then type the password (my9passswd, in this case). If you get a positive name query response after you enter a password, you should see a list of shared printers and files from that server. Check the names and try printing again.

TIP

Working with CUPS Printing Tools such as CUPS Web-based Administration and the Printer Configuration window effectively hide the underlying CUPS facility. There may be times, however, when you want to work directly with the tools and configuration files that come with CUPS. The following sections describe how to use some special CUPS features.

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Configuring the CUPS Server (cupsd.conf) The cupsd daemon process listens for requests to your CUPS print server and responds to those requests based on settings in the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file. The configuration variables in the cupsd.conf file are in the same form as those in the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf or apache2.conf). The Printer Configuration window adds access information to the cupsd.conf file. For other Linux systems, you may need to configure the cupsd.conf file manually. You can step through the cupsd.conf file to further tune your CUPS server. Let’s take a look at some of the settings in the cupsd.conf file. No classification is set by default. With the classification set to topsecret, you can have Top Secret displayed on all pages that go through the print server: Classification topsecret

Other classifications you can substitute for topsecret include classified, confidential, secret, and unclassified. The ServerCertificate and ServerKey lines (commented out by default) can be set up to indicate where the certificate and key are stored, respectively: ServerCertificate /etc/cups/ssl/server.crt ServerKey /etc/cups/ssl/server.key

Activate these two lines if you want to do encrypted connections. Then add your certificate and key to the files noted. The term browsing refers to the act of broadcasting information about your printer on your local network and listening for other print servers’ information. Browsing is on by default only for the local host (@LOCAL). You can allow CUPS browser information (BrowseAllow) for additional selected addresses. Browsing information is broadcast, by default, on address 255.255.255.255. Here’s how these defaults appear in the cupsd.conf file: Browsing On BrowseProtocols cups BrowseOrder Deny,Allow BrowseAllow from @LOCAL BrowseAddress 255.255.255.255 Listen *:631

To enable Web-based CUPS administration, the cupsd daemon can be set to listen on port 631 for all network interfaces to your computer based on this entry: Listen *:631. By default, it only listens on the local interface (Listen localhost:631). By turning on BrowseRelay (it’s off by default), you can allow CUPS browse information to be passed among two or more networks. The source-address and destination-address can be individual IP addresses or can represent network numbers: BrowseRelay source-address destination-address

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This is a good way to enable users on several connected LANs to discover and use printers on other nearby LANs. You can allow or deny access to different features of the CUPS server. An access definition for a CUPS printer (created from the Printer Configuration window) might appear as follows: Order Deny,Allow Deny From All Allow From 127.0.0.1 AuthType None

Here, printing to the ns1-hp1 printer is allowed only for users on the local host (127.0.0.1). No password is needed (AuthType None). To allow access to the administration tool, CUPS must be configured to prompt for a password (AuthType Basic).

Starting the CUPS Server For Linux systems that use SystemV-style startup scripts (such as Fedora, RHEL, and SUSE), starting and shutting down the CUPS print service is pretty easy. Use the chkconfig command to turn on CUPS so it starts at each reboot. Run the cups startup script to have the CUPS service start immediately. In Fedora and RHEL, type the following as root user: # chkconfig cupsd on # /etc/init.d/cups start

In Ubuntu, type the following: $ sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys start

If the CUPS service was already running, you should use restart instead of start. Using the restart option is also a good way to reread any configuration options you may have changed in the cupsd.conf file. Other Linux systems vary in how they start up the CUPS service. For example, in Slackware, you can turn on CUPS printing permanently by simply making the rc.cups script executable and then turn it on immediately by executing it (typing the following as root user): # chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.cups # /etc/rc.d/rc.cups start

In Gentoo Linux, you use the add option of the rc-update command to have the CUPS service start at each reboot and run the cupsd runlevel script to start it immediately. For example, type the following as root user: # rc-update add cupsd default # /etc/init.d/cupsd start

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Most Linux systems have similar ways of starting the CUPS service. You may need to poke around to see how CUPS starts on the distribution you are using.

Configuring CUPS Printer Options Manually If your Linux distribution doesn’t have a graphical means of configuring CUPS, you can edit configuration files directly. For example, when a new printer is created from the Printer Configuration window, it is defined in the /etc/cups/printers.conf file. Here is what a printer entry looks like: Info HP LaserJet 2100M Location HP LaserJet 2100M in hall closet DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0 State Idle Accepting Yes Shared No JobSheets none none QuotaPeriod 0 PageLimit 0 KLimit 0

This is an example of a local printer that serves as the default printer for the local system. The Shared No value is set because the printer is currently available only on the local system. The most interesting information relates to DeviceURI, which shows that the printer is connected to parallel port /dev/lp0. The state is Idle (ready to accept printer jobs), and the Accepting value is Yes (the printer is accepting print jobs by default). The DeviceURI has several ways to identify the device name of a printer, reflecting where the printer is connected. Here are some examples listed in the printers.conf file: DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI DeviceURI

parallel:/dev/plp serial:/dev/ttyd1?baud=38400+size=8+parity=none+flow=soft scsi:/dev/scsi/sc1d6l0 socket://hostname:port tftp://hostname/path ftp://hostname/path http://hostname[:port]/path ipp://hostname/path smb://hostname/printer

The first three examples show the form for local printers (parallel, serial, and scsi). The other examples are for remote hosts. In each case, hostname can be the host’s name or IP address. Port numbers or paths identify the locations of each printer on the host.

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If you find that you are not able to print because a particular printer driver is not supported in CUPS, you can set up your printer to accept jobs in raw mode. This can work well if you are printing from Windows clients that have the correct print drivers installed. To enable raw printing in CUPS, uncomment the following line in the /etc/cups/mime.types file in Linux:

TIP

application/octet-stream and uncomment the following line in the /etc/cups/mime.convs file: application/octet-stream application/vnd.cups-raw 0 After that, you can print files as raw data to your printers without using the -oraw option to print commands.

Using Printing Commands To remain backward-compatible with older UNIX and Linux printing facilities, CUPS supports many of the old commands for working with printing. Most command-line printing with CUPS can be performed with the lpr command. Word processing applications such as StarOffice, OpenOffice, and AbiWord are set up to use this facility for printing. You can use the Printer Configuration window to define the filters needed for each printer so that the text can be formatted properly. Options to the lpr command can add filters to properly process the text. Other commands for managing printed documents include lpq (for viewing the contents of print queues), lprm (for removing print jobs from the queue), and lpc (for controlling printers).

Printing with lpr You can use the lpr command to print documents to both local and remote printers (provided the printers are configured locally). Document files can be either added to the end of the lpr command line or directed to the lpr command using a pipe (|). Here’s an example of a simple lpr command: $ lpr doc1.ps

When you specify just a document file with lpr, output is directed to the default printer. As an individual user, you can change the default printer by setting the value of the PRINTER variable. Typically, you add the PRINTER variable to one of your startup files, such as $HOME/.bashrc. Adding the following line to your .bashrc file, for example, sets your default printer to lp3: export PRINTER=lp3

To override the default printer, specify a particular printer on the lpr command line. The following example uses the -P option to select a different printer: $ lpr -P canyonps doc1.ps

The lpr command has a variety of options that enable lpr to interpret and format several different types of documents. These include -# num, where num is replaced by the number of copies to print (from 1 to 100) and -l (which causes a document to be sent in raw mode, presuming that the document has already been formatted). To learn more options to lpr, type man lpr.

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Listing Printer Status with lpc Use the lpc command to list the status of your printers. Here is an example: $ /usr/sbin/lpc status hp: printer is on device ‘parallel’ speed -1 queuing is enabled printing is disabled no entries daemon present deskjet_5550: printer is on device ‘/dev/null’ speed -1 queuing is enabled printing is disabled no entries daemon present

This output shows two active printers. The first (hp) is connected to your parallel port. The second (deskjet_5550) is a network printer (shown as /dev/null). The hp printer is currently disabled (offline), although the queue is enabled so people can continue to send jobs to the printer.

Removing Print Jobs with lprm Users can remove their own print jobs from the queue with the lprm command. Used alone on the command line, lprm removes all the user’s print jobs from the default printer. To remove jobs from a specific printer, use the -P option, as follows: $ lprm -P lp0

To remove all print jobs for the current user, type the following: $ lprm -

The root user can remove all the print jobs for a specific user by indicating that user on the lprm command line. For example, to remove all print jobs for the user named mike, the root user types the following: $ lprm mike

To remove an individual print job from the queue, indicate its job number on the lprm command line. To find the job number, type the lpq command. Here’s what the output of that command may look like: $ lpq printer is ready and printing Rank Owner Job Files active root 133 /home/jake/pr1 2 root 197 /home/jake/mydoc

Total Size Time 467 23948

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The output shows two printable jobs waiting in the queue. (The printer is ready and printing the job listed as active.) Under the Job column, you can see the job number associated with each document. To remove the first print job, type the following: # lprm 133

Configuring Print Servers You’ve configured a printer so that you and the other users on your computer can print to it. Now you want to share that printer with other people in your home, school, or office. Basically, that means configuring the printer as a print server. The printers configured on your Linux system can be shared in different ways with other computers on your network. Not only can your computer act as a Linux print server (by configuring CUPS), but it can also appear as an SMB (Windows) print server to client computers. After a local printer is attached to your Linux system and your computer is connected to your local network, you can use the procedures in this section to share the printer with client computers using a Linux (UNIX) or SMB interface.

Configuring a Shared CUPS Printer Making the local printer added to your Linux computer available to other computers on your network is fairly easy. If a TCP/IP network connection exists between the computers sharing the printer, you simply grant permission to all hosts, individual hosts, or users from remote hosts to access your computer’s printing service. To manually configure a printer entry in the /etc/cups/printers.conf file to accept print jobs from all other computers, make sure the Shared Yes line is set. The following example from a printers.conf entry earlier in this chapter demonstrates what the new entry would look like: Info HP LaserJet 2100M Location HP LaserJet 2100M in hall closet DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0 State Idle Accepting Yes Shared Yes JobSheets none none QuotaPeriod 0 PageLimit 0 KLimit 0

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On Linux systems that use the Printer Configuration window described earlier in this chapter, it’s best to set up your printer as a shared printer using that window. Here’s how: 1. From the Desktop panel in GNOME, select System ➪ Administration ➪ Printing. The Printer Configuration window appears. 2. Click the name of the printer you want to share. (If the printer is not yet configured, refer to the “Setting Up Printers” section earlier in this chapter.) 3. Select the Shared box on the Settings tab so that a checkmark appears in the box. 4. If you want to restrict access to the printer to selected users, select the Access Control tab and choose one of the following options: ■

Allow Printing for Everyone Except These Users — With this selected, all users are allowed access to the printer. By typing user names into the Users box and clicking Add, you exclude selected users.

■

Deny Printing for Everyone Except These Users — With this selected, all users are excluded from using the printer. Type user names into the Users box and click Add to allow access to the printer for only those names you enter.

Now you can configure other computers to use your printer, as described in the “Setting Up Printers” section of this chapter. If you try to print from another computer and it doesn’t work, here are a few troubleshooting tips: ■

Open your firewall. If you have a restrictive firewall, it may not permit printing. You must enable access to port 513 (UDP and TCP) and possibly port 631 to allow access to printing on your computer. See Chapter 27 for information on configuring your firewall.

■

Enable LPD-style printing. Certain applications may require an older LPD-style printing service to print on your shared printer. To enable LPD-style printing on your CUPS server, you must turn on the cups-lpd service. Most Linux distributions that include CUPS should also have cups-lpd available. In Fedora and RHEL systems, type yum install cups-lpd as root user to install it. Then turn on the cups-lpd service and restart the xinetd daemon: # chconfig cups-lpd on # service xinetd restart

■

Check names and addresses. Make sure that you entered your computer’s name and print queue properly when you configured it on the other computer. Try using the IP address instead of the hostname. (If that works, it indicates a DNS name resolution problem.) Running a tool such as ethereal enables you to see where the transaction fails.

Access changes to your shared printer are made in the cupsd.conf and printers.conf files in your/etc/cups directory.

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Configuring a Shared Samba Printer Your Linux printers can be configured as shared SMB printers, so they appear to be available from Windows systems. To share your printer as though it were a Samba (SMB) printer, simply configure basic Samba server settings as described in Chapter 16. All your printers should be shared on your local network by default. The next section shows what the resulting settings look like and how you might want to change them.

Understanding smb.conf for Printing When you configure Samba, the /etc/samba/smb.conf file is constructed to enable all of your configured printers to be shared. Here are a few lines from the smb.conf file that relate to printer sharing: [global] . . . load printers = yes cups options = raw ; printcap name = /etc/printcap ; printing = cups . . . [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba browseable = yes writeable = no printable = yes

These example settings are the result of configuring Samba from the Samba Server Configuration window in Fedora. You can read the comment lines to learn more about the file’s contents. Lines beginning with a semicolon (;) indicate the default setting for the option. Remove the semicolon to change the setting. The selected lines show that printers from /etc/printcap were loaded and that the CUPS service is being used. With cups options set to raw, Samba assumes that print files have already been formatted by the time they reach your print server. This allows the Linux or Windows clients to provide their own print drivers. The last few lines are the actual printers’ definition. By changing the browseable option from no to yes, users can print to all printers (printable = yes).

Setting Up SMB Clients Chances are good that if you are configuring a Samba printer on your Linux computer, you want to share it with Windows clients. If Samba is set up properly on your computer and the client computers can reach you over the network, their finding and using your printer should be fairly straightforward.

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The first place a client computer looks for your shared Samba printer is in Network Neighborhood (or My Network Places, for Windows 2000). From the Windows 9x desktop, double-click the Network Neighborhood icon. (From Windows 2000 or XP, double-click the My Network Places icon.) With Windows Vista, you open the Network icon. The name of your host computer (the NetBIOS name, which is probably also your TCP/IP name) appears on the screen or within a workgroup folder on the screen. Open the icon that represents your computer. The window that opens shows your shared printers and folders. If your computer’s icon doesn’t appear in Network Neighborhood or My Network Places, try using the Search window. From Windows XP, choose Start ➪ Search ➪ Computer or People ➪ A Computer on the Network. Type your computer’s name into the Computer Name box and click Search. Double-click your computer in the Search window results panel. A window displaying the shared printers and folders from your computer appears. After your shared printer appears in the window, configure a pointer to that printer by opening (double-clicking) the printer icon. A message tells you that you must set up the printer before you can use it. Click Yes to proceed to configure the printer for local use. The Add Printer Wizard appears. Answer the questions that ask you how you intend to use the printer, and add the appropriate drivers. When you are done, the printer appears in your printer window. Another way to configure an SMB printer from a Windows XP operating system is to go to Start ➪ Printers and Faxes. In the Printers and Faxes window that appears, click the Add a Printer icon in the upper-left portion of the window, and then select Network Printer from the first window. From there you can browse and/or configure your SMB printer.

Summary Providing networked printing services is an essential efficiency on today’s business network. With the use of a few network-attached devices, you can focus your printer spending on a few highquality devices that multiple users can share instead of numerous lower-cost devices. In addition, a centrally located printer can make it easier to maintain the printer, while still enabling everyone to get his or her printing jobs done. The default printing service in nearly every major Linux distribution today is the Common UNIX Printing Service (CUPS). Any Linux system that includes CUPS offers the CUPS Web-based administrative interface for configuring CUPS printing. It also offers configuration files in the /etc/cups directory for configuring printers and the CUPS service (cupsd daemon). In Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux systems, you can configure your printer with the Printer Configuration windows available in both K Desktop and GNOME environments. A variety of drivers makes it possible to print to different kinds of printers, as well as to printers that are connected to computers on the network. You can set up your computer as a Linux print server, and you can also have your computer emulate an SMB (Windows) print server. After your network is configured properly and a local printer is installed, sharing that printer over the network as a UNIX or SMB print server is not very complicated.

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Running a File Server

M

ost networked computers are on the network in the first place so that users can share information. Some users need to collectively edit documents for a project, share access to spreadsheets and forms used in the daily operation of a company, or perform any number of similar file-sharing activities. It also can be efficient for groups of people on a computer network to share common applications and directories of information needed to do their jobs. By far the best way to accomplish the centralized sharing of data is through a file server.

IN THIS CHAPTER Setting up an NFS file server in Linux Setting up a Samba file server in Linux

A centralized file server can be backed up, preserving all stored data in one fell swoop. It can focus on the tasks of getting files to end users, rather than running user applications that can use client resources. And a centralized file server can be used to control access to information — security settings can dictate who can access what. Linux systems include support for each of the most common file server protocols in use today. Among the most common file server types in use today are the Network File System (NFS), which has always been the filesharing protocol of choice for Linux and other UNIX systems, and Samba (SMB protocol), which is often used by networks with many Windows and OS/2 computers. Samba allows you to share files with Windows PCs on your network, as well as access Windows file and print servers, making your Linux box fit in better with Windows-centric organizations. COMING FROM

WINDOWS

This chapter describes how to set up file servers and clients associated with NFS and Samba.

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When selecting file services to provide, keep in mind that less is more. If your clients and servers support multiple-file access capabilities (both NFS and SMB, for example), pick the service that lends itself to making the task less complicated for your organization.

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Setting Up an NFS File Server Instead of representing storage devices as drive letters (A, B, C, and so on), as they are in Microsoft operating systems, Linux systems connect file systems from multiple hard disks, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and other local devices invisibly to form a single Linux file system. The Network File System (NFS) facility enables you to extend your Linux file system in the same way, to connect file systems on other computers to your local directory structure. An NFS file server provides an easy way to share large amounts of data among the users and computers in an organization. An administrator of a Linux system that is configured to share its file systems using NFS has to perform the following tasks to set up NFS: 1. Set up the network. If a LAN or other network link is already connecting the computers on which you want to use NFS, you already have the network you need. 2. Choose what to share on the server. Decide which file systems on your Linux NFS server to make available to other computers. You can choose any point in the file system and make all files and directories below that point accessible to other computers. 3. Set up security on the server. You can use several different security features to suit the level of security with which you are comfortable. Mount-level security lets you restrict the computers that can mount a resource and, for those allowed to mount it, lets you specify whether it can be mounted read/write or read-only. With user-level security, you map users from the client systems to users on the NFS server so that they can rely on standard Linux read/write/execute permissions, file ownership, and group permissions to access and protect files. Linux systems that support Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux), such as Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, offer another means of offering or restricting shared NFS files and directories. 4. Mount the file system on the client. Each client computer that is allowed access to the server’s NFS shared file system can mount it anywhere the client chooses. For example, you may mount a file system from a computer called maple on the /mnt/maple directory in your local file system. After it is mounted, you can view the contents of that directory by typing ls /mnt/maple. Then you can use the cd command below the /mnt/maple mount point to see the files and directories it contains.

Figure 16-1 illustrates a Linux file server using NFS to share (export) a file system and a client computer mounting the file system to make it available to its local users.

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FIGURE 16-1 NFS can make selected file systems available to other computers. /etc/exports File

# mount oak:/apps/bin/oak/apps

/apps/bin pine(rw), maple(rw), spruce(rw)

OAK

PINE

/

/

apps/

bin/

oak/

apps/

file1 file2 file3

In this example, a computer named oak makes its /apps/bin directory available to clients on the network (pine, maple, and spruce) by adding an entry to the /etc/exports file. The client computer (pine) sees that the resource is available and mounts the resource on its local file system at the mount point /oak/apps, after which any files, directories, or subdirectories from /apps/bin on oak are available to users on pine (given proper permissions). Although it is often used as a file server (or other type of server), Linux is a general-purpose operating system, so any Linux system can share file systems (export) as a server or use another computer’s file systems (mount) as a client. Contrast this with dedicated file servers, such as NetWare, which can only share files with client computers (such as Windows workstations) and never act as a client. A file system is usually a structure of files and directories that exists on a single device (such as a hard disk partition or CD-ROM). A Linux file system refers to the entire directory structure (which may include file systems from several disks or NFS resources), beginning from root (/) on a single computer. A shared directory in NFS may represent all or part of a computer’s file system, which can be attached (from the shared directory down the directory tree) to another computer’s file system.

NOTE

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Getting NFS While nearly every Linux system supports NFS client and server features, NFS is not always installed by default. You’ll need different packages for different Linux systems to install NFS. Here are some examples: ■

Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems — You need to install the nfs-utils package to use Fedora as an NFS server. There is also a graphical NFS Configuration tool that requires you to install the system-config-nfs package. NFS client features are in the base operating system. To turn on the nfs service, type the following: # service nfs start # chkconfig nfs on

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Ubuntu and Debian — To act as an NFS client, the nfs-common and portmap packages are required; for an NFS server, the nfs-kernel-server package must be added. The following apt-get command line (if you are connected to the Internet) installs them all. Then, after you add an exported file system to the /etc/exports file (as described later), you can start the nfs-common and nfs-kernel-server scripts, as shown here: # apt-get install nfs-common portmap nfs-kernel-server # /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server start # /etc/init.d/nfs-common start

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Gentoo — With Gentoo, NFS file system and NFS server support must be configured into the kernel to use NFS server features. Installing the nfs-utils package (emerge nfs-utils) should get the required packages. To start the service, run rc-update and start the service immediately: # # # #

emerge nfs-utils rc-update add portmap default rc-update add nfs default /etc/init.d/nfs start

The commands (mount, exportfs, and so on) and files (/etc/exports, /etc/fstab, and so on) for actually configuring NFS are the same on every Linux system I’ve encountered. So once you have NFS installed and running, just follow the instructions in this chapter to start using NFS.

Sharing NFS File Systems To share an NFS file system from your Linux system, you need to export it from the server system. Exporting is done in Linux by adding entries into the /etc/exports file. Each entry identifies a directory in your local file system that you want to share with other computers. The entry also identifies the other computers that can share the resource (or opens it to all computers) and includes other options that reflect permissions associated with the directory.

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Remember that when you share a directory, you are sharing all files and subdirectories below that directory as well (by default). So, you need to be sure that you want to share everything in that directory structure. There are still ways to restrict access within that directory structure, and those are discussed later in this chapter.

Configuring the /etc/exports File To make a directory from your Linux system available to other systems, you need to export that directory. Exporting is done on a permanent basis by adding information about an exported directory to the /etc/exports file. The format of the /etc/exports file is Directory

Host(Options)

# Comments

where Directory is the name of the directory that you want to share, and Host indicates the host computer to which the sharing of this directory is restricted. Options can include a variety of options to define the security measures attached to the shared directory for the host. (You can repeat Host/Option pairs.) Comments are any optional comments you want to add (following the # sign). As root user, you can use any text editor to configure /etc/exports to modify shared directory entries or add new ones. Here’s an example of an /etc/exports file: /cal /pub /home

*.linuxtoys.net(rw) # Company events (ro,insecure,all_squash) # Public dir maple(rw,squash uids=0-99) spruce(rw,squash uids=0-99)

The /cal entry represents a directory that contains information about events related to the company. It is made accessible to everyone with accounts to any computers in the company’s domain (*.linuxtoys .net). Users can write files to the directory as well as read them (indicated by the rw option). The comment (# Company events) simply serves to remind you of what the directory contains. The /pub entry represents a public directory. It allows any computer and user to read files from the directory (indicated by the ro option) but not to write files. The insecure option enables any computer, even one that doesn’t use a secure NFS port, to access the directory. The all_squash option causes all users (UIDs) and groups (GIDs) to be mapped to the user ID 65534 (which is the nfsnobody user in Fedora and the nobody user in Ubuntu), giving them minimal permission to files and directories. The /home entry enables a set of users to have the same /home directory on different computers. Say, for example, that you are sharing /home from a computer named oak. The computers named maple and spruce could each mount that directory on their own /home directories. If you gave all users the same username/UIDs on all machines, you could have the same /home/user directory available for each user, regardless of which computer they are logged into. The uids=0–99 is used to exclude any administrative login from another computer from changing any files in the shared directory. These are just examples; you can share any directories that you choose, including the entire file system (/). Of course, there are security implications of sharing the whole file system or sensitive parts

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of it (such as /etc). Security options that you can add to your /etc/exports file are described throughout the sections that follow.

Hostnames in /etc/exports You can indicate in the/etc/exports file which host computers can have access to your shared directory. If you want to associate multiple hostnames or IP addresses with a particular shared directory, be sure to have a space before each hostname. However, add no spaces between a hostname and its options. For example: /usr/local maple(rw) spruce(ro,root_squash)

Notice that there is a space after (rw) but none after maple. Here are ways to identify hosts: ■

Individual host — Enter one or more TCP/IP hostnames or IP addresses. If the host is in your local domain, you can simply indicate the hostname. Otherwise, use the full host.domain format. These are valid ways to indicate individual host computers: maple maple.handsonhistory.com 10.0.0.11

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IP network — Allow access to all hosts from a particular network address by indicating a network number and its netmask, separated by a slash (/). Here are valid ways to designate network numbers: 10.0.0.0/255.0.0.0172.16.0.0/255.255.0.0 192.168.18.0/255.255.255.0 192.168.18.0/24

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TCP/IP domain — Using wildcards, you can include all or some host computers from a particular domain level. Here are some valid uses of the asterisk and question mark wildcards: *.handsonhistory.com *craft.handsonhistory.com ???.handsonhistory.com

The first example matches all hosts in the handsonhistory.com domain. The second example matches woodcraft, basketcraft, or any other hostnames ending in craft in the handsonhistory.com domain. The final example matches any three-letter hostnames in the domain. Using an asterisk doesn’t match subdomains. For example, *.handsonhistory.com would not cause the hostname mallard.duck.handsonhistory.com to be included in the access list.

NOTE

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NIS groups — You can allow access to hosts contained in an NIS group. To indicate an NIS group, precede the group name with an at (@) sign (for example, @group).

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Access Options in /etc/exports You don’t have to just give away your files and directories when you export a directory with NFS. In the options part of each entry in /etc/exports, you can add options that allow or limit access by setting read/write permission. These options, which are passed to NFS, are as follows: ■

ro — Client can mount this exported file system read-only. The default is to mount the file system as read/write.

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rw — Explicitly asks that a shared directory be shared with read/write permissions. (If the client chooses, it can still mount the directory as read-only.)

User Mapping Options in /etc/exports In addition to options that define how permissions are handled generally, you can use options to set the permissions that specific users have to NFS shared file systems. One method that simplifies this process is to assign each user with multiple user accounts the same username and UID on each machine. This makes it easier to map users so that they have the same permissions on a mounted file system that they do on files stored on their local hard disks. If that method is not convenient, user IDs can be mapped in many other ways. Here are some methods of setting user permissions and the /etc/exports option that you use for each method: ■

root user — The client’s root user is generally mapped into the nfsnobody username (UID 65534). This prevents a client computer’s root user from being able to change all files and directories in the shared file system. If you want the client’s root user to have root permission on the server, use the no_root_squash option. There may be other administrative users, in addition to root, that you want to squash. I recommend squashing UIDs 0–99 as follows: squash_uids=0–99.

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nfsnobody or nobody user/group — By using the 65534 user ID and group ID, you essentially create a user/group with permissions that do not allow access to files that belong to any real users on the server, unless those users open permission to everyone. However, files created by the 65534 user or group are available to anyone assigned as the 65534 user or group. To set all remote users to the 65534 user/group, use the all_squash option. The 65534 UIDs and GIDs are used to prevent the ID from running into a valid user or group ID. Using the anonuid or anongid option, you can change the 65534 user or group, respectively. For example, anonuid=175 sets all anonymous users to UID 175, and anongid=300 sets the GID to 300. (Only the number is displayed when you list file permissions unless you add entries with names to /etc/password and /etc/group for the new UIDs and GIDs.)

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User mapping — If a user has login accounts for a set of computers (and has the same ID), NFS, by default, maps that ID. This means that if the user named mike (UID 110) on maple has an account on pine (mike, UID 110), he can use his own remotely mounted files on either computer from either computer.

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If a client user who is not set up on the server creates a file on the mounted NFS directory, the file is assigned to the remote client’s UID and GID. (An ls -l on the server shows the UID of the owner.) Use the map_static option to identify a file that contains user mappings. The exports man page describes the map_static option, which enables you to create a file that contains new ID mappings so that you can remap client IDs into different IDs on

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Exporting the Shared File Systems After you have added entries to your /etc/exports file, run the exportfs command to have those directories exported (made available to other computers on the network). Reboot your computer or restart the NFS service, and the exportfs command runs automatically to export your directories. If you want to export them immediately, run exportfs from the command line (as root).

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It’s a good idea to run the exportfs command after you change the exports file. If any errors are in the file, exportfs identifies them for you.

Here’s an example of the exportfs command: # /usr/sbin/exportfs -a -v exporting maple:/pub exporting spruce:/pub exporting maple:/home exporting spruce:/home exporting *:/mnt/win

The -a option indicates that all directories listed in /etc/exports should be exported. The -v option says to print verbose output. In this example, the /pub and /home directories from the local server are immediately available for mounting by those client computers that are named (maple and spruce). The /mnt/win directory is available to all client computers. Running the exportfs command temporarily makes your exported NFS directories available. To have your NFS directories available on an ongoing basis (that is, every time your system reboots), you need to set your nfs startup scripts to run at boot time. This is described in the next section.

Starting the NFS Daemons If NFS has been disabled on your system (or is not active by default), you need to start the service. Different Linux distributions have different ways of turning on the NFS service, as you saw in the “Getting NFS” section earlier in the chapter. This section explores how the service is turned on in Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. In Fedora, you can use the chkconfig command to turn on the NFS service so that your files are exported and the nfsd daemons are running when your system boots. There are two startup scripts you want to turn on for the service to work properly. The NFS service exports file systems (from

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/etc/exports) and starts the nfsd daemon that listens for service requests. The nfslock service

starts the lockd daemon, which helps allow file locking to prevent multiple simultaneous use of critical files over the network. To turn on the NFS service, type the following as root user: # chkconfig nfs on # chkconfig nfslock on

The next time you start your computer, the NFS service will start automatically, and your exported directories will be available. If you want to start the service immediately, without waiting for a reboot, type the following: # /etc/init.d/nfs start # /etc/init.d/nfslock start

The NFS service should now be running and ready to share directories with other computers on your network.

Using NFS File Systems After a server exports a directory over the network using NFS, a client computer connects that directory to its own file system using the mount command. That’s the same command used to mount file systems from local hard disks, CDs, and floppies, but with slightly different options. mount can automatically mount NFS directories added to the /etc/fstab file, just as it does with local disks. NFS directories can also be added to the /etc/fstab file in such a way that they are not automatically mounted (so you can mount them manually when you choose). With a noauto option, an NFS directory listed in /etc/fstab is inactive until the mount command is used, after the system is up and running, to mount the file system.

Manually Mounting an NFS File System If you know that the directory from a computer on your network has been exported (that is, made available for mounting), you can mount that directory manually using the mount command. This is a good way to make sure that it is available and working before you set it up to mount permanently. Here is an example of mounting the /tmp directory from a computer named maple on your local computer: # mkdir /mnt/maple # mount maple:/tmp /mnt/maple

The first command (mkdir) creates the mount point directory (/mnt is a common place to put temporarily mounted disks and NFS file systems). The mount command identifies the remote computer and shared file system separated by a colon (maple:/tmp), and the local mount point directory (/mnt/maple) follows.

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If the mount fails, make sure the NFS service is running on the server and that the server’s firewall rules don’t deny access to the service. From the server, type ps ax | grep nfsd to see a list of nfsd server processes. If you don’t see the list, try to start your NFS daemons as described in the previous section. To view your firewall rules, type iptables -L (see Chapter 27 for a description of firewalls). By default, the nfsd daemon listens for NFS requests on port number 2049. Your firewall must accept udp requests on ports 2049 (nfs) and 111 (rpc).

NOTE

To ensure that the mount occurred, type mount. This command lists all mounted disks and NFS file systems. Here is an example of the mount command and its output (with file systems not pertinent to this discussion edited out): # mount /dev/sda3 on / type ext3 (rw) ... ... ... maple:/tmp on /mnt/maple type nfs (rw,addr=10.0.0.11)

The output from the mount command shows the mounted disk partitions, special file systems, and NFS file systems. The first output line shows the hard disk (/dev/sda3), mounted on the root file system (/), with read/write permission (rw), with a file system type of ext3 (the standard Linux file system type). The just-mounted NFS file system is the /tmp directory from maple (maple:/tmp). It is mounted on /mnt/maple and its mount type is nfs. The file system was mounted as read/write (rw), and the IP address of maple is 10.0.0.11 (addr=10.0.0.11). This is a simple example of using mount with NFS. The mount is temporary and is not remounted when you reboot your computer. You can also add options for NFS mounts: ■

-a — Mount all file systems in /etc/fstab (except those indicated as noauto).

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-f — This goes through the motions of (fakes) mounting the file systems on the command line (or in /etc/fstab). Used with the -v option, -f is useful for seeing what mount would do before it actually does it.

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-F — When used with -a, you tell mount to fork off a new incarnation of mount for each file system listed to be mounted in the /etc/fstab file. An advantage of using this option, as it relates to NFS shared directories, is that other file systems can be mounted if an NFS file system isn’t immediately available. This option should not be used, however, if the order of mounting is important (for example, if you needed to mount /mnt/pcs and then /mnt/pcs/arctic).

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-r — Mounts the file system as read-only.

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-w — Mounts the file system as read/write. (For this to work, the shared file system must have been exported with read/write permission.)

The next section describes how to make the mount more permanent (using the /etc/fstab file) and how to select various options for NFS mounts.

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Automatically Mounting an NFS File System To set up an NFS file system to mount automatically each time you start your Linux system, you need to add an entry for that NFS file system to the /etc/fstab file. That file contains information about all different kinds of mounted (and available to be mounted) file systems for your system. Here’s the format for adding an NFS file system to your local system: host:directory

mountpoint

nfs

options

0

0

The first item (host:directory) identifies the NFS server computer and shared directory. mountpoint is the local mount point on which the NFS directory is mounted. It’s followed by the file system type (nfs). Any options related to the mount appear next in a comma-separated list. (The last two zeros configure the system to not dump the contents of the file system and not run fsck on the file system.) The following are examples of NFS entries in /etc/fstab: maple:/tmp oak:/apps

/mnt/maple nfs /oak/apps nfs

rsize=8192,wsize=8192 noauto,ro

0 0 0 0

In the first example, the remote directory /tmp from the computer named maple (maple:/tmp) is mounted on the local directory /mnt/maple (the local directory must already exist). The file system type is nfs, and read (rsize) and write (wsize) buffer sizes (discussed in the “Using mount Options” section later in this chapter) are set at 8192 to speed data transfer associated with this connection. In the second example, the remote directory is /apps on the computer named oak. It is set up as an NFS file system (nfs) that can be mounted on the /oak/apps directory locally. This file system is not mounted automatically (noauto), however, and can be mounted only as read-only (ro) using the mount command after the system is already running. The default is to mount an NFS file system as read/write. However, the default for exporting a file system is read-only. If you are unable to write to an NFS file system, check that it was exported as read/write from the server.

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Mounting noauto File Systems Your /etc/fstab file may also contain devices for other file systems that are not mounted automatically. For example, you might have multiple disk partitions on your hard disk or an NFS shared file system that you might want to mount only occasionally. A noauto file system can be mounted manually. The advantage is that when you type the mount command, you can type less information and have the rest filled in by the contents of the /etc/fstab file. So, for example, you could type: # mount /oak/apps

With this command, mount knows to check the /etc/fstab file to get the file system to mount (oak:/apps), the file system type (nfs), and the options to use with the mount (in this case ro for read-only). Instead of typing the local mount point (/oak/apps), you could have typed the remote file system name (oak:/apps) and had other information filled in.

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When naming mount points, including the name of the remote NFS server in that name can help you remember where the files are actually being stored. This may not be possible if you are sharing home directories (/home) or mail directories (/var/spool/mail). For example, you might mount a file system from a machine called duck on the directory /mnt/duck.

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Using mount Options You can add several mount options to the /etc/fstab file (or to a mount command line itself) to influence how the file system is mounted. When you add options to /etc/fstab, they must be separated by commas. For example, here the noauto, ro, and hard options are used when oak:/apps is mounted: oak:/apps

/oak/apps

nfs

noauto,ro,hard

0 0

The following are some options that are valuable for mounting NFS file systems: ■

hard — If this option is used and the NFS server disconnects or goes down while a pro-

cess is waiting to access it, the process will hang until the server comes back up. This is helpful if it is critical that the data you are working with not get out of sync with the programs that are accessing it. (This is the default behavior.) ■

soft — If the NFS server disconnects or goes down, a process trying to access data from

the server will time out after a set period of time when this option is on. An input/output error is delivered to the process trying to access the NFS server. ■

rsize — The number of bytes of data read at a time from an NFS server. The default is

1024. Using a larger number (such as 8192) will get you better performance on a network that is fast (such as a LAN) and is relatively error-free (that is, one that doesn’t have a lot of noise or collisions). ■

wsize — The number of bytes of data written at a time to an NFS server. The default is 1,024. Performance issues are the same as with the rsize option.

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timeo=# — Sets the time after an RPC timeout occurs that a second transmission is made, where # represents a number in tenths of a second. The default value is seven-tenths of a second. Each successive timeout causes the timeout value to be doubled (up to 60 seconds maximum). Increase this value if you believe that timeouts are occurring because of slow response from the server or a slow network.

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retrans=# — Sets the number of minor timeouts and retransmissions that need to happen before a major timeout occurs.

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retry=# — Sets how many minutes to continue to retry failed mount requests, where # is

replaced by the number of minutes to retry. The default is 10,000 minutes (which is about one week). ■

bg — If the first mount attempt times out, try all subsequent mounts in the background. This option is very valuable if you are mounting a slow or sporadically available NFS file system. By placing mount requests in the background, your system can continue to mount other file systems instead of waiting for the current one to complete.

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If a nested mount point is missing, a timeout to allow for the needed mount point to be added occurs. For example, if you mount /usr/trip and /usr/trip/extra as NFS file systems and /usr/trip is not yet mounted when /usr/trip/extra tries to mount, /usr/ trip/extra will time out. If you’re lucky, /usr/trip comes up and /usr/trip/extra mounts on the next retry.

NOTE

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fg — If the first mount attempt times out, try subsequent mounts in the foreground. This is the default behavior. Use this option if it is imperative that the mount be successful before continuing (for example, if you are mounting /usr).

Any of the options that don’t require a value can have no appended to it to have the opposite effect. For example, nobg indicates that the mount should not be done in the background.

Using autofs to Mount NFS File Systems on Demand Recent improvements to auto-detecting and mounting removable devices have meant that you can simply insert or plug in those devices to have them detected, mounted, and displayed. However, to make the process of detecting and mounting remote NFS file systems more automatic, you still need to use a facility such as autofs (short for automatically mounted file systems). The autofs facility will mount network file systems on demand when someone tries to use the file systems. With the autofs facility configured and turned on, you can cause any NFS shared directories to mount on demand. To use the autofs facility, you need to have the autofs package installed. (For Fedora and RHEL, you can type yum install autofs or for Ubuntu or Debian apt-get install autofs to install the package from the network.) With autofs enabled, if you know the hostname and directory being shared by another host computer, simply change (cd) to the autofs mount directory (/net or /var/autofs by default). This causes the shared resource to be automatically mounted and made accessible to you. The following steps explain how to turn on the autofs facility in Fedora: 1. In Fedora, as root user from a Terminal window, open the /etc/auto.master file and look for the following line: /net

-hosts

This causes the /net directory to act as the mount point for the NFS shared directories you want to access on the network. (If there is a comment character at the beginning of that line, remove it.) 2. Start the autofs service by typing the following as root user: # /etc/init.d/autofs start

3. On a Fedora system, set up the autofs service to restart every time you boot your system: # chkconfig autofs on

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Believe it or not, that’s all you have to do. If you have a network connection to the NFS servers from which you want to share directories, try to access a shared NFS directory. For example, if you know that the /usr/local/share directory is being shared from the computer on your network named shuttle, you can do the following: $ cd /net/shuttle

If that computer has any shared directories that are available to you, you can successfully change to that directory. You also can type the following: $ ls usr

You should be able to see that the usr directory is part of the path to a shared directory. If there were shared directories from other top-level directories (such as /var or /tmp), you would see those as well. Of course, seeing any of those directories depends on how security is set up on the server. Try going straight to the shared directory as well. For example: $ cd /net/shuttle/usr/local/share $ ls info man music television

At this point, the ls command should reveal the contents of the /usr/local/share directory on the computer named shuttle. What you can do with that content depends on how it was configured for sharing by the server. This can be a bit disconcerting because you won’t see any files or directories until you actually try to use them, such as changing to a network-mounted directory. The ls command, for example, won’t show anything under a network-mounted directory until the directory is mounted, which may lead to a sometimes-it’s-there-and-sometimes-it’s-not impression. Just change to a network-mounted directory, or access a file on such a directory, and autofs will take care of the rest.

Unmounting NFS File Systems After an NFS file system is mounted, unmounting it is simple. You use the umount command with either the local mount point or the remote file system name. For example, here are two ways you could unmount maple:/tmp from the local directory /mnt/maple: # umount maple:/tmp # umount /mnt/maple

Either form works. If maple:/tmp is mounted automatically (from a listing in /etc/fstab), the directory will be remounted the next time you boot Linux. If it was a temporary mount (or listed as noauto in /etc/fstab), it won’t be remounted at boot time.

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The command is umount, not unmount. This is easy to get wrong.

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If you get the message device is busy when you try to unmount a file system, it means the unmount failed because the file system is being accessed. Most likely, one of the directories in the NFS file system is the current directory for your shell (or the shell of someone else on your system). The other possibility is that a command is holding a file open in the NFS file system (such as a text editor). Check your Terminal windows and other shells, and cd out of the directory if you are in it, or just close the Terminal windows. If an NFS file system won’t unmount, you can force it (umount -f /mnt/maple) or unmount and clean up later (umount -l /mnt/maple). The -l option is usually the better choice because a forced unmount can disrupt a file modification that is in progress.

Other Cool Things to Do with NFS You can share some directories to make it convenient for a user to work from any of several different Linux computers on your network. Some examples of useful directories to share are: ■

/var/spool/mail — By sharing this directory from your mail server and mounting it on the same directory on other computers on your network, you can enable users to access their mail from any of those other computers. This saves users from having to download messages to their current computers or from having to log in to the server just to get mail. There is only one mailbox for each user, no matter from where it is accessed.

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/home — This is a similar concept to sharing mail, except that all users have access to their home directories from any of the NFS clients. Again, you would mount /home on the

same mount point on each client computer. When the user logs in, he or she has access to all of the startup files and data files contained in his or her /home/user directory. If your users rely on a shared /home directory, you should make sure that the NFS server that exports the directory is fairly reliable. If /home isn’t available, the user may not have the startup files to log in correctly, or any of the data files needed to get work done. One workaround is to have a minimal set of startup files (.bashrc, .Xdefaults, and so on) available in the user’s home directory when the NFS directory is not mounted. This enables the user to log in properly at those times.

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/project — Although you don’t have to use this name, a common practice among users on a project is to share a directory structure containing files that people on the project need to share so that everyone can work on original files and keep copies of the latest versions in one place. (Of course, a better way to manage a project is with CVS or some other version control–type software, but this is a poor person’s way to do it.)

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/var/log — An administrator can keep track of log files from several different computers by mounting the /var/log file on the administrator’s computer. (Each server may need to export the directory to enable root to be mapped between the computers for this to work.) If there are problems with a computer, the administrator can then easily view the shared log files live.

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If you are working exclusively with Linux and other UNIX systems, NFS is probably your best choice for sharing file systems. You can mount NFS shares on a Windows client, but only if you have NFS client software for Windows, which does not come with Windows by default. If your network consists primarily of Microsoft Windows computers or a combination of systems, you may want to look into using Samba for file sharing.

Setting Up a Samba File Server Samba is a software package that comes with Ubuntu, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems and many other Linux systems. (You can obtain the Samba software package from www.samba.org if it is not included with your distribution.) Samba enables you to share file systems and printers on a network with computers that use the Server Message Block (SMB) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) protocol. SMB is the Microsoft protocol that is delivered with Windows operating systems for sharing files and printers. CIFS is an open, cross-platform protocol that is based on SMB. Samba contains free implementations of SMB and CIFS. In Windows file and printer sharing, SMB is sometimes referred to as CIFS (Common Internet File System), which is an Internet standard network file system definition based on SMB, or NetBIOS, which was the original SMB communication protocol.

NOTE

The Samba software package contains a variety of daemon processes, administrative tools, user tools, and configuration files. To do basic Samba configuration, start with the Samba Server Configuration window, which provides a graphical interface for configuring the server and setting directories to share. Most of the Samba configuration you do ends up in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. If you need to access features that are not available through the Samba Server Configuration window, you can edit /etc/samba/smb.conf by hand or use SWAT, a Web-based interface, to configure Samba. Daemon processes consist of smbd (the SMB daemon) and nmbd (the NetBIOS name server). The smbd daemon makes the file-sharing and printing services you add to your Linux system available to Windows client computers. The Samba package supports the following client computers: ■

Windows 9x

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Windows NT

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Windows ME

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Windows 2000

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Windows XP

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Windows Vista

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Windows for Workgroups

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MS Client 3.0 for DOS

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OS/2

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Dave for Macintosh computers

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Mac OS X

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Samba for Linux

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Mac OS X Server ships with Samba, so you can use a Macintosh system as a server. This chapter, however, discusses using a Linux system as a server. You can then have Macintosh, Windows, or Linux client computers. In addition, Mac OS X ships with both client and server software for Samba.

NOTE

As for administrative tools for Samba, you have several shell commands at your disposal: testparm and testprns, with which you can check your configuration files; smbstatus, which tells you what computers are currently connected to your shared resources; and the nmblookup command, with which you can query computers. Samba uses the NetBIOS service to share resources with SMB clients, but the underlying network must be configured for TCP/IP. Although other SMB hosts can use TCP/IP, NetBEUI, and IPX/SPX to transport data, Samba for Linux supports only TCP/IP. Messages are carried between host computers with TCP/IP and are then handled by NetBIOS.

Getting and Installing Samba You can get Samba software in different ways, depending on your Linux distribution. Here are a few examples: ■

Ubuntu and Debian — To use Samba in Ubuntu or Debian, you must install the samba and smbclient packages using apt-get. Then start the Samba service by running the appropriate scripts from the /etc/init.d directory, as follows: # apt-get install samba samba-common smbclient swat # /etc/init.d/samba start

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Gentoo — With Gentoo, you need to have configured net-fs support into the kernel to use Samba server features. Installing the net-fs package (emerge net-fs) should get the required packages. To start the service, run rc-update and start the service immediately: # emerge samba # rc-update add samba default # /etc/init.d/samba start

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Fedora and other Red Hat Linux systems — You need to install the samba, samba-client, samba-common, and optionally, the system-config-samba and samba-swat packages to use Samba in Fedora. You can then start Samba using the service and chkconfig commands as follows: # service smb start # chkconfig smb on

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The commands and configuration files are the same on most Linux systems using Samba. The Samba project itself comes with a Web-based interface for administering Samba called Samba Web Administration Tool (SWAT). For someone setting up Samba for the first time, SWAT is a good way to get it up and running. If your Linux installation does not have help documents for Samba available, consult the documentation on the Samba project home page (www.samba.org). Also, check the extensive help information that comes with SWAT.

NOTE

Configuring Samba with SWAT In addition to offering an extensive interface to Samba options, SWAT comes with an excellent help facility. And if you need to administer Samba from another computer, SWAT can be configured to be remotely accessible and secured by requiring an administrative login and password.

Turning on the SWAT Service Before you can use SWAT, you must do some configuration. The first thing you must do is turn on the SWAT service, which is done differently in different Linux distributions. Here’s how to set up SWAT in Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems: 1. Turn on the SWAT service by typing the following, as root user, from a Terminal window: # chkconfig swat on

2. Pick up the change to the service by restarting the xinetd startup script as follows: # service xinetd restart

Linux distributions such as Debian, Slackware, and Gentoo turn on the SWAT service from the inetd superserver daemon. After SWAT is installed, you simply remove the comment character from in front of the swat line in the /etc/inetd.conf file (as root user, using any text editor) and restart the daemon. Here’s an example of what the swat line looks like in Ubuntu and Debian: swat

stream

tcp

nowait.400

root

/usr/sbin/tcpd

/usr/sbin/swat

With the SWAT service ready to be activated, restart the inetd daemon so it rereads the inetd.conf file. To do that in Debian, type the following as root user: # /etc/init.d/inetd restart

The init.d script and xinetd services are the two ways that SWAT services are generally started in Linux. So if you are using a Linux distribution other than Fedora or Debian, look in the /etc/ inetd.conf file or /etc/xinetd.d directory (which is used automatically in Fedora), for the location of your SWAT service.

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When you have finished this procedure, a daemon process will be listening on your network interfaces for requests to connect to your SWAT service. You can now use the SWAT program, described in the next section, to configure Samba.

Starting with SWAT You can run the SWAT program by typing the following URL in your local browser: http://localhost:901/

Enter the root username and password when the browser prompts you. The SWAT window (see Figure 16-2) appears.

FIGURE 16-2 Use SWAT from your browser to manage your Samba configuration.

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Instead of running SWAT from your local browser, you can run it from another computer on the network by substituting the server computer’s name for localhost. (To allow computers besides localhost to access the swat service on Fedora systems, you must change or remove the only_from = 127.0.0.1 line from the /etc/xinetd.d/swat file and restart the xinetd service.) This is not necessary with Ubuntu systems.

TIP

The following sections explain how to use SWAT to create your configuration entries (in /etc/ samba/smb.conf) and to work with that configuration. Any time you use a GUI to change a plain-text configuration file (as you do with SWAT), you may lose some of the information that you put in by hand. In this case, SWAT deletes comment lines and rearranges other entries. To protect changes you have made manually, make a backup copy of your /etc/samba/smb.conf file before you edit it with SWAT.

CAUTION

Creating Global Samba Settings in SWAT A group of global settings affects how file and print sharing are generally accomplished on a Samba server. These settings appear under the [global] heading in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. To view and edit global variables, click the GLOBALS button on the SWAT window. Seven types of options are available: base, security, logging, tuning, printing, browse, and WINs. Each option relates to the exact parameters used in the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. You can refer to the smb.conf man page (type man smb.conf) to get more information on these parameters.

NOTE

Base Options The following options relate to basic information associated with your Samba server: ■

Workgroup — The name of the workgroup associated with the group of SMB hosts. By default, the value for this field is WORKGROUP.

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Realm — If you are using kerberos authentication, this value indicates the kerberos realm to use. Typically, that is reflected by the hostname of the server providing the service.

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NetBIOS name — The name assigned to this Samba server. You can use the same name as your DNS hostname or make it blank, in which case the DNS hostname is used automatically. Your DNS hostname is filled in for you by default.

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NetBIOS alias — Enables you to set a way of referring to a host computer (an alias) that is different from the host’s TCP/IP DNS name.

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Server string — A string of text identifying the server. This name appears in places such as the printer comment box. By default, it says Samba and the version number.

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Interfaces — Enables you to set up more than one network interface and let Samba browse several different subnetworks. The form of this field can be IP Address/Subnetwork Mask. Or, you could identify a network interface (such as eth0 for the first Ethernet card on your computer). For example, a Class C network address may appear as: 192.168.24.11/255.255.255.0

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Security Options Of the security options settings, the first (Security) is the most important one to get right. It defines the type of security used to give access to the shared file systems and printers to the client computers. (To see some of the fields described here, you need to click the Advanced view.) ■

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Security — Sets how password and user information is transferred to the Samba server from the client computer. As noted earlier, it’s important to get this value right. Samba versions 2.0 and later have a different default value for security (security=user) than the earlier versions of Samba do (security=share). If you are coming from an earlier version of Samba and clients are failing to access your server, this setting is a good place to start. Here are your options: ■

user — The most common type of security used to share files and printers to Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP clients. It is the default set with Samba in the current release. This setting is appropriate if users are doing a lot of file sharing (as opposed to a Samba server used mostly as a print server). It requires that a user provide a username/password before using the server. The easiest way to get this method working is to give a Linux user account to every client user who will use the Samba server, therefore providing basically the same file permissions to a user account through Samba as the same user would get if he or she were logged in directly to Linux.

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share — The share value for security works best for just print sharing or for providing file access that is more public (guest sharing). A client doesn’t need to provide a valid username and password to access the server. However, the user typically has a guest level of permission to access and change files. See the “Assigning Guest Accounts” sidebar in this chapter for further information.

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server — From the client’s point of view, this is the same as user security in that the client still has to provide a valid username/password combination to use the Samba server at all. The difference is on the server side. With server security, the username/password is sent to another SMB server for validation. If that fails, Samba tries to validate the client using user security.

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domain — From the client’s point of view, this is the same as user security. This setting is used only if the Samba server has been added to a Windows NT domain (using the smbpasswd command). When a client tries to connect to the Samba server in this mode, its username and password are sent to a Windows NT Primary or Backup Domain controller. This is accomplished the same way that a Windows NT server would perform validation. Valid Linux user accounts must still be set up.

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ads — This security option causes Samba to act as a domain member in an ADS realm. Kerberos must be installed on the Samba machine to use this option. Samba must also join the ADS realm (see the net utility).

auth methods — Sets the authentication method used by the Samba server (smbd). Leave the default in most cases. Authentication methods you can choose include anonymous access (guest), relay authentication through winbind (winbind), pre-winbind NT authentication (ntdomain), local lookups based on netbios or domain name (sam), or remote DC authentication of trusted users (trustdomain).

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Encrypt passwords — Controls whether encrypted passwords can be negotiated with the client. This is on (Yes) by default. For domain security, this value must be Yes. Later versions of Windows NT (4.0 SP3 or later) and Windows 98 and Windows 2000 expect encrypted passwords to be on.

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client schannel — Choose this if the client requires the use of netlogin schannel ( yes), offers schannel but doesn’t enforce it (auto), or doesn't even offer schannel (no).

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server schannel — Choose this if the server requires clients to use netlogin schannel (yes), offers schannel but doesn’t enforce it (auto), or doesn’t even offer schannel (no). If you set this to no, you must apply the Windows XP WinXP_SignOrSeal.reg patch available from the Samba project.

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map to guest — Lets you select to map clients into your guest account (with minimal permissions) in selected situations. For example, you can map usernames that are not valid (Bad User), users that provide the wrong password (Bad Password), or users with an invalid user ID (Bad Uid). Or you can select Never to never map those users to guest.

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Obey PAM restrictions — Turn this on (Yes) if you want to use PAM for account and session management. Even if activated, PAM is not used if the encrypted passwords feature is turned on (encrypt passwords = yes). (PAM stands for Pluggable Authentication Modules and is used for authenticating host computers and users.)

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PAM password change — Indicates to use the PAM password change control flag for Samba. If this is on (Yes), SMB clients will use PAM instead of the program listed in the Password Program value for changing SMB passwords.

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Passwd program — Indicates which password program to use to change Linux user passwords. By default, /usr/bin/passwd is used, with the current username (%u) inserted.

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Passwd chat — Sets the chat that goes on between the Samba daemon (smbd) and the Linux password program (/usr/bin/passwd by default) when smbd tries to synchronize SMB passwords with Linux user passwords.

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UNIX password sync — With this on (Yes), Samba tries to update a user’s Linux user password with his or her SMB password when the SMB password is changed. To do this, SMB runs the passwd command as the root user. This is on by default.

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Guest account — Specifies the username for the guest account. When a service is specified as Guest OK, the name entered here is used to access that service. The account is usually the nobody username.

Make sure that the guest account is a valid user. (The default of nobody should already be set up to work.) With an invalid user as the guest account, the IPC$ connection that lists the shared resources fails.

TIP

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Hosts allow — Contains a list of one or more hosts that are allowed to use your computer’s Samba services. By default, users from any computer can connect to the Samba server (of course, they still have to provide valid usernames and passwords). Generally, you use this option to allow connections from specific computers (such as 10.0.0.1) or computer networks (such as 10.0.0.) that are excluded by the Hosts deny option.

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Hosts deny — Contains a list of one or more hosts from which users are not allowed to use your computer’s Samba services. You can make this option fairly restrictive, and then add the specific hosts and networks you want to use the Samba server. By default, no hosts are denied.

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Preload — You can add services that you want to add to the browse list to the preload option.

16

Logging Options The following options help define how logging is done on your Samba server: ■

Log level — Sets the debug level for the syslog option that is used when logging Samba activity. Raise the level from the default (0) to log more Samba activity.

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Log file — Defines the location of the Samba smb log file. By default, Samba log files are contained in /var/log/samba (with filenames log.nmbd, log.smbd, and smb.log). In this option, the %m is replaced by smb to set the smb log file as /var/log/samba/smb.log.

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Max log size — Sets the maximum amount of space, in kilobytes, that the log files can consume. By default, the value is set to 0 (no limit).

Assigning Guest Accounts

S

amba always assigns the permissions level of a valid user on the Linux system to clients who use the server. In the case of share security, the user is assigned a guest account (the nobody user account by default).

If the guest account value isn’t set, Samba goes through a fairly complex set of rules to determine which user account to use. The result is that it can be hard to ensure which user permissions will be assigned in each case. That’s why user security is recommended if you want to provide more specific user access to your Samba server.

Printing Options The printing options are used to define how printer status information is presented. For the overwhelming majority of Linux systems, the printing value is set to cups. You can use printing styles from other types of operating systems, such as UNIX System V (sysv), AIX (aix), HP UNIX (hpux), and Berkeley UNIX (bsd), to name a few. LPRng (lprng), offered by many UNIX systems, is also included. Other printing options enable you to redefine the location of basic printing commands (lpq, lprm, and so on) and printing files (such as the name of the printcap file).

Browse Options A browse list is a list of computers that are available on the network to SMB services. Clients use this list to find computers that are on their own LAN and also computers in their workgroups that may be on other reachable networks.

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In Samba, browsing is configured by options described later in this section and implemented by the nmbd daemon. If you are using Samba for a workgroup within a single LAN, you probably don’t need to concern yourself with the browsing options. However, if you are using Samba to provide services across several physical subnetworks, you might want to consider configuring Samba as a domain master browser. Here are some points to think about: ■

Samba can be configured as a master browser, which allows it to gather lists of computers from local browse masters to form a wide-area server list. (Browse masters keep track of available shared directories and printers on the network of Samba systems and broadcast information about those resources as necessary.)

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If Samba is acting as a domain master browser, Samba should use a WINS server to help browse clients resolve the names from this list.

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Samba can be used as a WINS server, although it can also rely on other types of operating systems to provide that service.

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There should be only one domain master browser for each workgroup. Don’t use Samba as a domain master for a workgroup with the same name as an NT domain.

If you are working in an environment that has a mix of Samba and Windows NT servers, use an NT server as your WINS server. If Samba is your only file server, choose a single Samba server (nmbd daemon) to supply the WINS services. A WINS server is basically a name server for NetBIOS names. It provides the same service that a DNS server does with TCP/IP domain names: It can translate names into addresses. A WINS server is particularly useful for allowing computers to communicate with SMB across multiple subnetworks where information is not being broadcast across the subnetworks’ boundaries.

NOTE

To configure the browsing feature in Samba, you must have the workgroup named properly (described earlier in this section). Here are the global options related to SMB browsing: ■

OS level — Set a value to control whether your Samba server (nmbd daemon) may become the local master browser for your workgroup. Raising this setting increases the Samba server’s chance to control the browser list for the workgroup in the local broadcast area. If the value is 0, a Windows machine will probably be selected. A value of 60 ensures that the Samba server is chosen over an NT server. The default is 20.

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Preferred master — Set this to Yes if you want to force selection of a master browser and give the Samba server a better chance of being selected. (Setting Domain Master to Yes along with this option ensures that the Samba server will be selected.) This is set to Auto by default, which causes Samba to try to detect the current master browser before taking that responsibility.

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Local master — Set this to Yes if you want the Samba server to become the local browser master. (This is not a guarantee, but gives it a chance.) Set the value to No if you do not want your Samba server selected as the local master. Local Master is Auto by default.

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16

Domain master — Set this to Yes if you want the Samba server (nmbd daemon) to identify itself as the domain master browser for its workgroup. This list will then allow client computers assigned to the workgroup to use SMB-shared files and printers from subnetworks that are outside their own subnetwork. This is set to No by default.

If browsing isn’t working, check the nmbd log file (/var/log/samba/log.nmbd). To get more detail, increase the debug information level to 2 or 3 (described earlier in this section) and restart Samba. The log can tell you if your Samba server is the master browser and, if so, which computers are on its list.

NOTE

WINS Options Use the WINS options if you want to have a particular WINS server provide the name-to-address translation of NetBIOS names used by SMB clients: ■

WINS server — If there is a WINS server on your network that you want to use to resolve the NetBIOS names for your workgroup, enter that server’s IP address here. Again, you probably want to use a WINS server if your workgroup extends outside the local subnetwork.

■

WINS support — Set this value to Yes if you want your Samba server to act as a WINS server. (It’s No by default.) Again, this is not needed if all the computers in your workgroup are on the same subnetwork. Only one computer on your network should be assigned as the WINS server.

In addition to the values described here, you can access dozens more options by clicking the Advanced View button. When you have filled in all the fields you need, click Commit Changes on the screen to have the changes written to the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.

Configuring Shared Directories with SWAT To make your shared directory available to others, add an entry to the SWAT window. To use SWAT to set up Samba to share directories, do the following: You may see one or more security warnings during the course of this procedure. These messages warn you that someone can potentially view the data you are sending to SWAT. If you are working on your local host or on a private LAN, the risk is minimal.

NOTE

1. From the main SWAT window, click the SHARES button. 2. Type the name of the directory that you want to share in the Create Share box, and then click Create Share. 3. Add any of these options: ■

Comment — A few words to describe the shared directory (optional).

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Path — The path name of the directory you are sharing.

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Invalid users — Lets you add a list of users who are not allowed to log in to the Samba service. Besides identifying usernames directly (from your /etc/passwd file), invalid users can be identified by Linux group or NIS netgroup, by adding a + or & in front of the name, respectively. Precede the name with @ to have Samba first check your NIS netgroup, then the Linux group for the name.

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Valid users — Add names here to identify which Linux user accounts can access the Samba service. As with invalid users, names can be preceeded with +, &, or @ characters.

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Admin users — Lets you identify users who have administrative privilege on a particular share. This is available with security = share type of security only.

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Read list — Add users to this list if you want to grant them only read access to shares (even if a share is available with read-write access). This is available with security = share type of security only.

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Write list — Add users to this list to grant them write access to shares, even if the share is available to all others with read-only access. This is available with security = share type of security only.

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Guest account — If Guest OK is selected, the username that is defined here is assigned to users accessing the file system. No password will be required to access the share. The nobody user account (used only by users who access your computer remotely) is the default name used. (The FTP user is also a recommended value.)

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Read only — If Yes, files can only be read from this file system, but no remote user can save or modify files on the file system. Select No if you want users to be allowed to save files to this directory over the network.

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Guest OK — Select Yes to enable anyone access to this directory without requiring a password.

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Hosts allow — Add the names of the computers that will be allowed to access this file system. Separate hostnames by commas, spaces, or tabs. Here are some valid ways of entering hostnames: ■

localhost — Allows access to the local host.

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192.168.12.125 — IP address. Enter an individual IP address.

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192.168.12. — Enter a network address to include all hosts on a network. (Be sure to put a dot at the end of the network number or it won’t work!)

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pcren, pcstimpy — Enables access to individual hosts by name.

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EXCEPT host — If you are allowing access to a group of hosts (such as by entering a network address), use EXCEPT to specifically deny access from one host from that group.

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Hosts deny — Denies access to specific computers by placing their names here. By default, no particular computers are excluded. Enter hostnames in the same forms you used for Hosts allow.

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Browseable — Indicates whether you can view this directory on the list of shared directories. This is on (Yes) by default.

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Available — Enables you to leave this entry intact but turns off the service. This is useful if you want to close access to a directory temporarily. This is on (Yes) by default. Select No to turn it off.

4. Select Commit Changes.

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At this point, the shared file systems should be available to the Samba client computers (Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000, OS/2, Linux, and so on) that have access to your Linux Samba server. Before you try that, however, you can check your Samba configuration.

Checking Your Samba Setup with SWAT From the SWAT window, select the STATUS button. From this window, you can restart your smbd and nmbd processes. Likewise, you can see lists of active connections, active shares, and open files. (The preferred way to start the smbd and nmbd daemons is to set up the smb service to start automatically. Type chkconfig smb on to set the service to start at boot time.)

Working with Samba Files and Commands Although you can set up Samba through the Samba Server Configuration window or SWAT, many administrators prefer to edit the /etc/samba/smb.conf directly. As root user, you can view the contents of this file and make needed changes. If you selected user security (as recommended), you will also be interested in the smbusers and smbpasswd files (in the /etc/samba directory). These files, as well as commands such as testparm and smbstatus, are described in the following sections.

Editing the smb.conf File Changes you make using the Samba Server Configuration window or SWAT Web interface are reflected in your /etc/samba/smb.conf file. Here’s an example of a smb.conf file (with comments removed): [global] workgroup = ESTREET server string = Samba Server on Maple hosts allow = 192.168.0. printcap name = /etc/printcap load printers = yes printing = cups log file = /var/log/samba/%m.log max log size = 0 smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd security = user encrypt passwords = Yes unix password sync = Yes passwd program = /usr/bin/passwd %u passwd chat = *New*password* %n\n *Retype*new*password* %n\n *passwd: *all*authentication*tokens*updated*successfully* pam password change = yes obey pam restrictions = yes socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192 username map = /etc/samba/smbusers dns proxy = no [homes] comment = Home Directories

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browseable = no writable = yes valid users = %S create mode = 0664 directory mode = 0775 [printers] comment = All Printers path = /var/spool/samba browseable = no guest ok = no writable = no printable = yes

I won’t go through every line of this example, but here are some observations. In the [global] section, the workgroup is set to ESTREET, the server is identified as the Samba Server on Maple, and only computers that are on the local network (192.168.0.) are allowed access to the Samba service. You must change the local network to match your network. Definitions for the local printers that will be shared are taken from the /etc/printcap file, the printers are loaded ( yes), and the CUPS printing service is used. Separate log files for each host trying to use the service are created in /var/log/samba/%m.log (with %m automatically replaced with each hostname). There is no limit to log file size (0). This example uses the user-level security (security = user), which allows a user to log in once and then easily access the printers and the user’s home directory on the Linux system. Password encryption is on (encrypt passwords = yes) because most Windows systems have password encryption on by default. Passwords are stored in the /etc/samba/smbpasswd file on your Linux system. The dns proxy = no option prevents Linux from looking up system names on the DNS server (used for TCP/IP lookups). The [homes] section enables each user to access his or her Linux home directory from a Windows system on the LAN. The user will be able to write to the home directory. However, other users will not be able see or share this directory. The [printers] section enables all users to print to any printer configured on the local Linux system.

Adding Samba Users Performing user-style Samba security means assigning a Linux user account to each person using the Linux file systems and printers from his or her Windows workstation. (You could assign users to a guest account instead, but in this example, all users have their own accounts.) Then you need to add SMB passwords for each user. For example, here is how you would add a user whose Windows workstation login is chuckp: 1. Type the following as root user from a Terminal window to add a Linux user account: # useradd -m chuckp

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2. Add a Linux password for the new user as follows: # passwd chuckp Changing password for user chuckp New UNIX password: ******** Retype new UNIX password: ********

3. Repeat the previous steps to add user accounts for all users from Windows workstations on your LAN that you want to give access to your Linux system. 4. Type the following command to create the Samba password file (smbpasswd) on Fedora Linux systems: # cat /etc/passwd | /usr/bin/mksmbpasswd.sh > /etc/samba/smbpasswd

In Ubuntu and Debian systems, use the /usr/sbin/mksmbpasswd command instead of mksmbpasswd.sh. 5. Add an SMB password for the user as follows: # smbpasswd chuckp New SMB password: ********** Retype new SMB password: **********

6. Repeat this step for each user. Later, each user can log in to Linux and rerun the passwd and smbpasswd commands to set private passwords. In the most recent version of Samba, options are available in the smb.conf file that cause SMB and Linux passwords to be synchronized automatically. See descriptions of the passwd program, passwd chat, and UNIX password sync options in the SWAT section of this chapter.

NOTE

Starting the Samba Service When you have your Samba configuration the way you would like it, restart the Samba server as described earlier in the “Getting and Installing Samba” section. You can now check SMB clients on the network to see if they can access your Samba server.

Testing Your Samba Permissions You can run several commands from a shell to work with Samba. One is the testparm command, which you can use to check the access permissions you have set up. It lists global parameters that are set, along with any shared directories or printers.

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Checking the Status of Shared Directories The smbstatus command can view who is currently using Samba shared resources offered from your Linux system. The following is an example of the output from smbstatus: # smbstatus Samba version 3.2.0-17.fc9 PID Username Group Machine ------------------------------------------------------------------25770 chris chris booker (10.0.0.50) 25833 chris chris 10.0.0.50 (10.0.0.50) Service pid machine Connected at ------------------------------------------------------IPC$ 25729 booker Mon Aug 25 12:06:29 2008 mytmp 25770 booker Mon Aug 25 12:16:03 2008 mytmp 25833 10.0.0.50 Mon Aug 25 12:25:52 2008 IPC$ 25730 booker Mon Aug 25 12:06:29 2008 Locked files: Pid Uid DenyMode Access R/W Oplock SharePath Name Time -------------------------------------------------------------------------------25833 501 DENY_NONE 0x12019f RDWR NONE /tmp .b.txt.swp Mon Aug 25 12:26:18 2008

This output shows that from your Linux Samba server, the mytmp service (which is a share of the /tmp directory) is currently open by the computer named booker. PID 25833 is the process number of the smbd daemon on the Linux server that is handling the service. The file that is open is the /tmp/.b.txt.swap file, which happened to be opened by a vi command. It has read/write access.

Using Samba Shared Directories Once you have configured your Samba server, you can try using the shared directories from a client computer on your network. The following sections describe how to use your Samba server from another Linux system or from various Windows systems.

Using Samba from Nautilus To connect to a Samba share from a Nautilus file manager, use the Open Location box by clicking File ➩ Open Location. Then type smb: into your Nautilus file manager Location box. A list of SMB workgroups on your network appears in the window. You can select a workgroup, choose a server, and then select a resource to use. This should work for shares requiring no password. The Nautilus interface seems to be a bit buggy when you need to enter passwords. It also requires you to either send clear-text passwords or type the username and password into your location box. For example, to get to my home directory (/home/chris) through Nautilus, I can type my username, password, server name, and share name as follows: smb://chris:my72mgb@arc/chris

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Mounting Samba Directories in Linux Linux can view your Samba shared directories as it does any other medium (hard disk, NFS shares, CD-ROM, and so on). Use mount to mount a Samba shared file system so that it is permanently connected to your Linux file system. Here’s an example of the mount command in which a home directory (/home/chris) from a computer named toys on a local directory (/mnt/toys) is mounted. The command is typed, as root user, from a Terminal window: # mkdir /mnt/toys # mount -t smbfs -o username=chris,password=a72mg //toys/chris /mnt/toys

The file system type for a Samba share is smbfs (-t smbfs). The username (chris) and password (a72mg) are passed as options (-o). The remote share of the home directory on toys is //toys/chris. The local mount point is /mnt/toys. At this point, you can access the contents of /home/chris on toys as you would any file or directory locally. You will have the same permission to access and change the contents of that directory (and its subdirectories) as you would if you were the user chris using those contents directly from toys. To mount the Samba shared directory permanently, add an entry to your /etc/fstab file. For the example just described, you’d add the following line (as root user): //toys/chris

/mnt/toys

smbfs

username=chris,password=a72mg

Troubleshooting Your Samba Server A lot can go wrong with a Samba server. If your Samba server isn’t working properly, the descriptions in this section should help you pinpoint the problem.

Basic Networking in Place? You can’t share anything with other computers without a network. Before computers can share directories and printers from Samba, they must be able to communicate on your LAN. Your Samba server can use the TCP/IP name as the NetBIOS name (used by Window networks for file and printer sharing), or a separate NetBIOS name can be set in the smb.conf file. It is critical, however, that the broadcast address be the same as the broadcast address for all clients communicating with your Samba server. To see your broadcast address, type the following (as root user): # ifconfig -a eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWadd 00:D1:B3:75:A5:1B inet addr:10.0.0.1 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

The important information is the broadcast address (Bcast: 10.0.0.255), which is determined by the netmask (Mask:255.255.255.0). If the broadcast address isn’t the same for the Samba server and the clients on the LAN, the clients cannot see that the Samba server has directories or printers to share.

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Samba Service Running? A basic troubleshooting check is to see if the service is running. Try the smbclient command from your Linux system to see that everything is running and being shared as you expect it to be. The smbclient command is a great tool for getting information about a Samba server and even accessing shared directories from both Linux and Windows computers. While logged in as root or any user who has access to your Samba server, type the following: $ smbclient -L localhost Password: ********** Domain=[ESTREET] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.3-4] Sharename Type Comment -----------------homes Disk Home Directories IPC$ IPC IPC Service (Samba Server) ADMIN$ Disk IPC Service (Samba Server) hp-ns1 Printer Domain=[ESTREET] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.8-4] Server --------PINE MAPLE NS1

Comment ------Samba Server Windows XP Samba Server

Workgroup --------ESTREET

Master ------PINE

The Samba server is running on the local computer in this example. Shared directories and printers, as well as servers in the workgroup, appear here. If the Samba server is not running, you see Connection refused messages, and you need to start the Samba service as described earlier in this chapter.

Firewall Open? If the Samba server is running, it should begin broadcasting its availability on your LAN. If you try to access the server from a Windows or Linux client on your LAN but get a Connection refused error, the problem may be that the firewall on your Linux Samba server is denying access to the NetBIOS service.

CROSS-REF

Chapter 27 covers firewalls.

If you have a secure LAN, you can type the following (as root user) to flush your firewall filtering rules temporarily: # iptables -F

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Try to connect to the Samba server from a Windows or Linux client. If you find that you can connect to the server, turn the firewall back on: # /etc/init.d/iptables restart

You then need to open access to ports 137, 138, and 139 in your firewall so that the Samba server can accept connections for services. (See Chapter 27 for information about modifying your firewalls.)

User Passwords Working? Try accessing a shared Samba directory as a particular user (from the local host or other Linux system on your LAN). You can use the smbclient command to do this. Here is an example: # smbclient //localhost/tmp -U chris added interface ip=10.0.0.1 bcast=10.0.0.255 nmask=255.255.255.0 Password: ******* Domain=[ESTREET] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 2.2.7a] smb: \>

In this example, smbclient connects to the directory share named tmp as the Samba user named chris. If the password is accepted, you should see information about the server and a smb:\> prompt. If you cannot access the same shared directory from a Windows client, it’s quite possible that the client is passing an improper username and password. Part of the problem may be that the Windows client is not providing encrypted passwords. For certain Windows clients, using encrypted passwords requires that you change a Windows registry for the machine. One way to change the registry is with the Windows regedit command. Registry changes required for different Windows systems are contained within the /usr/share/doc/ samba-*/docs/Registry directory. The smbclient command, used here to list server information and test passwords, can also be used to browse the shared directory and copy files after you are connected. After you see the smb:\> prompt, type help to see the available commands. The interface is similar to any ftp client, such as sftp.

TIP

If your particular problem has not been addressed in this troubleshooting section, please refer to the user documentation that accompanies the Samba project. On Fedora systems, look in the /usr/ share/doc/samba-*/htmldocs directory for some excellent documentation you can read from your Web browser. In particular, refer to the Samba-HOWTO-Collection/diagnosis.html file for help with troubleshooting.

Summary By providing centralized file servers, an organization can efficiently share information and applications with people within the organization, with customers, or with anyone around the world. Several different technologies are available for making your Linux computer into a file-serving powerhouse.

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The Network File System (NFS) protocol was one of the first file server technologies available. It is particularly well suited for sharing file systems among Linux and other UNIX systems. NFS uses standard mount and umount commands to connect file systems to the directory structures of client computers. The Samba software package that comes with many Linux distributions (or can be easily installed if it doesn’t) contains protocols and utilities for sharing files and printers among Windows and OS/2 operating systems. It uses SMB protocols that are included with all Microsoft Windows systems and therefore provides a convenient method of sharing resources on LANs containing many Windows systems.

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Choosing and Installing Different Linux Distributions IN THIS PART Chapter 17 Running Ubuntu Linux Chapter 18 Running Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Chapter 19 Running Debian GNU/Linux Chapter 20 Running SUSE and openSUSE Linux Chapter 21 Running KNOPPIX Chapter 22 Running Yellow Dog Linux Chapter 23 Running Gentoo Linux Chapter 24 Running Slackware Linux Chapter 25 Running Freespire and Xandros Chapter 26 Running Mandriva Chapter 27 Running a Linux Firewall/Router Chapter 28 Running Bootable Linux Distributions

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U

buntu Linux (www.ubuntu.com) has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity since its first release at the end of 2004. Relying on a constantly expanding number of core developers and contributions from its growing legion of advocates and users, Ubuntu has become one of the leading Linux distributions in the world.

IN THIS CHAPTER Ubuntu bursts onto the Linux scene Challenges facing Ubuntu

“Ubuntu” is an African word that means “humanity to others.” The project pursues the meaning of its name by: ■

Making the distribution freely available; in fact, the project will even mail you pressed CDs without charge, although it can take up to 10 weeks to receive them (https://shipit.ubuntu.com).

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Providing support for many languages.

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Offering features to make it usable by people with disabilities.

Installing Ubuntu Using Ubuntu

Ubuntu is based on Debian GNU/Linux but offers more focused goals than Debian. The original goals of Ubuntu were to provide a tested, easy-to-use Linux distribution with a regular release schedule (every six months), to provide support and updates for those releases for an extended period of time, and to fit this easy-to-use desktop Linux on one installation CD. Ubuntu now offers Desktop and Server Install CDs, as well as an Alternate Desktop Install CD to help with automated deployments, partitioning, and low-resource system installs. Ubuntu has its own repositories of freely available software on the Internet, providing a huge assortment of software organized in the traditional licensing-oriented Debian fashion. These packages can be installed using the familiar apt-get, aptitude, and synaptic software management tools.

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This chapter describes some of the major features of Ubuntu. It also describes how to install Ubuntu on your computer or run the live CD version of Ubuntu.

Overview of Ubuntu Although Ubuntu is primarily a Debian distribution on the inside, Ubuntu’s focus on internationalization and general usability, its regular release schedule, and its simplified installation process are what make it different from Debian. South African businessman, Internet entrepreneur, and longtime Debian advocate Mark Shuttleworth sponsors Ubuntu Linux through his organization Canonical Limited (www.canonical.com). Some of the best and brightest open source developers (many originally from the Debian project) are on Canonical’s team for producing Ubuntu. The organization’s commitment to free distribution and rapid development has attracted a large and active user and development community for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Releases Coming into 2009, the Ubuntu project has produced nine releases, which recently have followed Ubuntu’s promised every-six-month release cycle. Each release carries a version number derived from the year and month in which it was released, and is named after a woodland creature (your woodlands may differ from those in South Africa, home of Ubuntu): ■

Warty Warthog — Released in October 2004 under Ubuntu version number 4.10.

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Hoary Hedgehog — Released in April 2005 under Ubuntu version number 5.04.

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Breezy Badger — Released in October 2005 under Ubuntu version number 5.10.

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Dapper Drake — Released in June 2006 under Ubuntu version number 6.06.

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Edgy Eft — Released in October 2006 under Ubuntu version number 6.10.

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Feisty Fawn — Released in April 2007 under Ubuntu version number 7.04.

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Gutsy Gibbon — Released in October 2007 under Ubuntu version number 7.10.

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Hardy Heron — Released in April 2008 under Ubuntu version number 8.04.

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Intrepid Ibex — Released in October 2008 under Ubuntu version number 8.10.

In addition to the regular releases, Ubuntu also releases an LTS version for Long Term Support for those who want reliability above features. The LTS version offers support for three years on desktop versions and five years on server versions. Ubuntu 8.04 is the most recent version offering LTS.

NOTE

If you are new to Linux, Ubuntu is designed with you in mind. The standard Ubuntu desktop installer provides a great set of defaults for most installation options. Ubuntu, however, also provides other installers that include many more choices for customization when you install it. If you are transitioning from Debian (or another Debian derivative, such as KNOPPIX), you will find it easy to work with Ubuntu. You install and remove packages and manage services with Ubuntu using the same methods as with Debian.

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Beginning with the Dapper Drake release, the Ubuntu project offers each release as three different CDs or a single DVD. The CDs are as follows: ■

Desktop Install CD — This boots directly to Ubuntu, where you can either experiment with Ubuntu (without changing anything on your existing system) or install Ubuntu to a hard drive. This is the equivalent of the live CD provided by many distributions, except that it also provides an easy way to install Ubuntu Linux permanently if you decide to do so. (This CD is included on the DVD that comes with this book.)

■

Server Install CD — Lets you install various server configurations, ranging from a basic server to a standard LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/Perl) Web server.

■

Alternate Desktop CD — Enables you to install an Ubuntu desktop system from the command line in a more complex fashion than that provided by the Desktop CD’s graphical installer (such as using Logical Volume Management). It also supports OEM firms that want to customize and ship Ubuntu-based systems, and provides a custom server installation mechanism. It does not include the live CD.

Getting started with Ubuntu is easy because the Desktop Install CD boots to a fully functioning desktop system. The Ubuntu Desktop Install CD does a great job at detecting hardware, setting up your video card environment (mouse, keyboard, and video card), and booting right to a GNOME desktop without changing anything on your existing system. It includes an icon on the desktop that enables you to install Ubuntu to your system after walking through just a few simple configuration screens (discussed later in this chapter). The following sections describe the desktop and server features in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex).

Ubuntu Installer The Ubuntu installer has helped make Ubuntu a tremendously popular distribution, showing Ubuntu’s commitment to usability right out of the gate. The desktop Ubuntu install process does an excellent job of detecting hardware and system configuration information. Ubuntu’s Desktop Install CD “test-drive” needs only a few additional bits of information in order to install its whole set of software packages to your hard drive. The other Ubuntu CDs feature a more traditional, text-based installer that should be familiar to users of any Debian-like system and are designed to work on almost any system with VGA graphics and 128MB or so of memory. This chapter focuses on the graphical Ubuntu installer, but the textbased installer on the Server and Alternate Desktop Install CDs is also quite easy to use. Many ease-of-use features are built into the Ubuntu installer. For example, if you are not sure which type of keyboard you have, you have the option to type a few keys (as prompted by the installer) and have it try to figure out the type of keyboard you have. You also have the option to resize existing partitions on your disk during installation (a very handy feature if you have a hard disk with only one big Windows partition that you don’t want to completely delete).

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Ubuntu as a Desktop As promised, Ubuntu 8.10 contains the latest desktop features available at the time it was released. Along with the latest desktop components you would expect (GNOME, OpenOffice.org, and so on), Ubuntu 8.10 also includes improved features for installing applications and customizing the desktop experience. Here are some of the features in Ubuntu 8.10: ■

GNOME Desktop — GNOME 2.24 provides the desktop environment for this release of Ubuntu. Ubuntu’s default desktop theme, Human, is a calm, brown theme in keeping with the standard Ubuntu color scheme.

■

Flash experience — The handling of Flash content includes improved ways of using the plug-in finder wizard, better experiences with Web sites that use the Flash detection kit, and more help to users who want to select alternatives.

■

Firefox 3 — This major Firefox release provides improved security, ease-of-use, and performance. (See Chapter 6 for details.)

■

Print driver downloads — When you use the Printer Setup tool in Ubuntu and your system doesn’t have the driver needed for your printer, the new tool will automatically grab the required print driver from the OpenPrinting database.

Beyond these features, Ubuntu contains a broad range of open source applications suitable for the desktop. Leading the list are the latest versions of OpenOffice.org (popular office productivity suite), GIMP (image manipulation software), and Firefox (Web browser). Many of the tools for configuring and setting preferences for the desktop that come with the GNOME project also fit well into the Ubuntu goals of accessibility and ease-of-use. GNOME’s Removable Drives and Media Preferences window is set to immediately launch appropriate applications when you insert a CD or DVD, attach an external hard disk, or plug in a camera, printer, or scanner. The Assistive Technology Preferences window enables someone who is visually or physically impaired to use magnifiers and onscreen keyboards. Figure 17-1 (opposite) shows examples of some of these GNOME tools and applications.

Ubuntu as a Server Many features that are not useful for a desktop Linux system but are important to servers have been built into the Ubuntu default server installer, available on the Ubuntu Server Install CD (or the complete Ubuntu Install DVD). As a central computing resource, servers tend to need to grow, and features such as the Ubuntu server installer’s ability to create LVM partitions during installation make it easier for you to add disk space to your server on-the-fly in the places it is needed. Unlike the graphical Ubuntu Desktop installer described later in this chapter, the Ubuntu server installer is a non-graphical, terminaloriented installer that is fast and easy to use regardless of the graphical capabilities of your server.

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FIGURE 17-1 Assistive technology and easier device management with Ubuntu

The default server installation supports up to 4GB of RAM on 32-bit PCs, and also provides kernel support for the GFS and OCFS2 cluster file systems. While GFS and OCFS2 are still relatively new file systems, and therefore may not be ready for use on your productions systems, they are available for you to try out in Ubuntu. To use Ubuntu as a thin-client server, Linux Terminal Server Project software is included in the Ubuntu server. You can read about how to use LTSP on the Ubuntu Thin Client HOWTO (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ThinClientHowto). The default server install takes up only about 400MB of disk space, although it is a very bare-bones system. Besides base system packages and core utilities, you get software for managing your network connections and file systems, but not much else. Luckily, however, you do get application management utilities (such as apt-get), so any open source software you want to add to your server is just an apt-get away with an Internet connection. The most common type of server that many people install is a LAMP server system, which uses Linux to support an Apache Web server and provides the MySQL database. It also supports the Perl programming language, in which many Web applications are written. The Ubuntu Server Install CD

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provides a separate installer for this type of server system, highlighting Ubuntu’s awareness of (and sensitivity) to the needs of its users, regardless of whether they are sitting in front of their desktop computer system or are cloistered in a machine room somewhere.

Ubuntu Spin-Offs Because no single CD set of software is going to please everyone, some spin-off projects have already been created from Ubuntu. The following are three partner projects associated with Ubuntu Linux: ■

Kubuntu (www.kubuntu.org) — This project combines the latest version of the KDE desktop with each desktop Ubuntu release. KDE replaces the GNOME desktop, which is used by default with Ubuntu.

■

Xubuntu (www.xubuntu.org) — This project blends the power and usability of Ubuntu with the lightweight Xfce desktop system, delivering a full-featured Ubuntu system that is less demanding of system and graphics resources. Xubuntu runs well on older or lesspowerful systems, and is ideal for laptops.

■

Edubuntu (www.edubuntu.org) — This project focuses on producing a version of Ubuntu that is suitable for use in classrooms. Edubuntu combines Ubuntu with software geared toward education (such as KDE Edutainment software) and software used for creating inexpensive computer clusters (such as the Linux Terminal Server Project). As a result, Edubuntu can be used to fill a school’s whole computer lab with working, educational workstations at very little cost.

Other Ubuntu spin-offs that have different levels of association with the main Ubuntu project include Mythbuntu (multimedia-player spin centering on MythTV), Ubuntu Studio (multimediacreator spin), Ubuntu JeOS (virtual appliance spin), Ubuntu Mobile (spin designed for Intel Mobile Internet devices), and Ubuntu Netbook Remix (like Ubuntu Mobile, but for subnotebooks). The Gobuntu spin (Ubuntu with no non-free software) has been abandoned to focus on installation tools that let you choose to have only free software during an install. Because of Ubuntu’s commitment to help people of different cultures, with support for many different languages and keyboard types, there are Ubuntu communities to support users from all over the world. These include Ubuntu China (www.ubuntu.org.cn), Ubuntu Germany (www.ubuntu-forum.de), Ubuntu Sweden (www.ubuntulinux.se), Ubuntu Indonesia (www .ubuntulinux.or.id), Ubuntu Portugal (www.ubuntu-pt.org), and many other international Ubuntu sites.

Challenges Facing Ubuntu Despite its rise to stardom, Ubuntu is bound to suffer some growing pains. Some possible challenges Ubuntu faces include: ■

Peaceful coexistence with Debian — As a Debian-inspired distribution, Ubuntu was originally quite dependent on Debian and continued many of the licensing, usability, and stability issues that are heavily emphasized in Debian Linux. Some members of the Debian community initially saw Ubuntu as hijacking the hard work of the Debian project. The

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success of Ubuntu, however, speaks for both itself and the technical excellence and commitment of the Debian community. Ubuntu pushes its fixes and enhancements back to the Debian community, as well as to the developers who support individual open source packages. The two distributions need to continue to work together to improve both distributions and GNU/Linux in general. ■

Fast release cycles — Ubuntu has set itself a pace of six-month release cycles. In terms of major free Linux distributions, only Fedora has stayed close to a six-month release cycle. Debian has certainly not been known to rush to release new versions — the slowness of Debian releases was one of the initial inspirations for Ubuntu.

■

Business model — While the Ubuntu project does offer shirts, hats, teddy bears, and other products you can purchase that carry the Ubuntu logo (https://shop.canonical .com/), proceeds from that and donations are clearly not going to be enough to support a long-term development effort. The project has made it clear that it intends to be committed to software that is “100% free of charge” going forward. Canonical, Ltd, and many other vendors around the world, provide paid commercial support for Ubuntu releases, but “paid support” business models for Linux have rarely been successful. Only time (and a growing number of home, small, and medium business and enterprise Ubuntu users) will tell if Ubuntu can manage to succeed without adopting a free/paid community model such as those of Fedora/Red Hat and openSUSE/SUSE.

■

Commitment to open source — Desktop computer users expect that their wireless cards will just work and their multimedia content will just play. However some of the software needed to do those things, is either encumbered by patent claims or not available in open source. To compete, Ubuntu has made some of this non-free software available to its users — sometimes from Ubuntu repositories and sometimes through for-pay software (offered through services such as www.cnr.com). Whether this non-purist approach to the free software world will have long-term negative effects (some have already begun complaining about it) remains to be seen.

■

Freedom and responsibility — Endeavors with goals such as freedom and equality as guiding lights can sometimes suffer from a lack of control. As philosophically inspired distributions become more popular, technical discussions can sometimes spin out of control to become almost religious discussions. Ubuntu seems to resist the response that some profit-oriented Linux projects ultimately resort to: “Because we say so,” but the line between openness and determinism is a tough one to walk. Ubuntu’s leadership has done a good job setting up a structure to make hard decisions in a free environment. For example, Ubuntu now has a Community Council (to create teams and projects, as well as leaders for each team) and a Technical Board (to guide the technical direction of Ubuntu). There is also now a Code of Conduct (www.ubuntu.com/community/ conduct) presented to keep everyone participating in the project on the same path.

Ubuntu has prospered and increased in popularity far beyond the initial excitement inspired by being the new kid on the block. Ubuntu is holding up well under the pressure and continues to grow both in the size of its development and support communities and its popularity.

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Installing Ubuntu Installing Ubuntu to hard disk requires a computer with at least 64MB of RAM for an Ubuntu Server, and 256MB of RAM for an Ubuntu Desktop installation. However, to use the live CD–based installer, you need at least 384MB of RAM. As for hard disk space, you will need at least 4GB of space to install a desktop system or 500MB of disk space for a minimal server system. For the minimal server, you need to be able to work from the command line (no GUI is installed).

ON the DVD-ROM

The Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop Install CD image is included on the DVD that comes with this book. Refer to Appendix A for information on using and installing from that image.

If you are setting up Ubuntu to dual-boot on a desktop computer with a Windows system currently installed, you can resize your Windows partition during the installation process. It is easier, however, to first make sure that the free disk space exists outside of the Windows partition. See Chapter 8 for information on resizing hard disk partitions to make space for a Linux installation. Of course, you should also back up any important data files at this point. The following procedure describes how to boot and install Ubuntu: 1. Insert the Ubuntu Desktop Install CD and reboot your computer. You should see the Ubuntu CD’s boot screen, as shown in Figure 17-2. (If your system doesn’t boot from the CD or you don’t see the Ubuntu splash screen, make sure your computer is capable of booting from a CD, as described in Chapter 8.) FIGURE 17-2 The Ubuntu Desktop Install CD boot screen

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2. The boot screen for the Ubuntu Desktop Install CD provides a number of different options for booting your system, testing the installation CD or your system’s memory, and so on. It also provides a number of special menus and screens that you can view to activate capabilities that might help you if you have special requirements during the install. The following is a list of the function keys that you can press and descriptions of each resulting menu or screen: ■

Help (F1) — Lists what is available on the boot screens.

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Language (F2) — Enables you to set the language used by Ubuntu and the Ubuntu installer.

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Keymap (F3) — Enables you to specify the type of keyboard used by Ubuntu and the Ubuntu installer.

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Modes (F4) — Enables you to specify the graphics capabilities, add extra drivers from an update CD, and do a special OEM install of the system on which you are booting or installing Ubuntu.

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Accessibility (F5) — Enables you to activate various accessibility-related options in the Ubuntu installer, including a screen magnifier, onscreen keyboard, audio reading of various prompts, and so on.

■

Other Options (F6) — Enables you to modify the kernel command line used to boot Ubuntu, which lets you deactivate certain hardware systems (such as power control), turn on more verbose debugging, and so on.

3. To proceed without modifying any of these options, simply press Enter to boot Ubuntu and start a default desktop. The icon for installing Ubuntu to your hard disk appears in the upper-left corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 17-3. 4. When the Ubuntu appears, you can experiment with Ubuntu Linux on your current system without making any changes to your hard drive, or install Ubuntu to your system. To install Ubuntu on your computer system, double-click the Install icon to begin the installation process. FIGURE 17-3 The Ubuntu desktop and the icon for the graphical installer

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5. Select the language you want to use for Ubuntu. (The default is English.) To accept the selected value and proceed to the next screen, click Forward. You are asked to enter your location. 6. Choose your location. Your location will refine the language used (in other words, US English might be different from Canadian English), and will also be used to set the current time. If the time shown is incorrect for your location, you can click the Set Time button to display a dialog that enables you to correctly specify the local time. To accept the selected values and proceed to the next screen, click Forward. You are asked to enter your keyboard layout. 7. Select your keyboard type. To accept the selected value and proceed to the next screen, click Forward.

You are asked to begin partitioning your hard disk.

CAUTION

Changing or removing existing disk partitions can result in data being lost. Consider your options carefully before selecting a partitioning method.

8. Select one of the following choices for partitioning your hard disk. (See Chapter 8 for further information on disk partitioning.) ■

Guided - resize — Select this choice if you want to take disk space from an existing partition to use for your Ubuntu installation. Move the slider bar to take disk space from the selected partition. (You can use this if the entire hard disk is devoted to Windows and you want to be able to dual boot with Ubuntu.)

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Guided - use entire disk — This erases your entire hard disk, and then repartitions it automatically. If you have more than one hard disk, it lets you choose which one to use. Choose this method if you are prepared to remove all the data on your hard disk. Ubuntu installer will repartition using common Linux file system types.

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Guided - use the largest continuous free space — This allows you to install Ubuntu on a system on which another operating system is already installed, as long as you have sufficient, unallocated space available on your system’s disk(s). Chapter 8 explains how to repartition an existing system in order to free up space for this option.

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Manual — This lets you manually create your own hard disk partitions. This is the best choice if you want to keep existing partitions from being erased. This is also the best choice if you have special needs, such as creating separate partitions to hold user data (/home) or server data (/var), or using a particular file system type for an area of your hard disk. Manual partitioning is considered to be a more advanced skill.

If you selected to manually edit the partition table, proceed to the next step. Otherwise, skip ahead to Step 10. 9. During the manual partitioning phase, you can specify information about how you want to use partitions on the system where you are installing Ubuntu. You must define at least two partitions. One partition is used as swap space, which is a special partition format

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that Linux systems use for managing virtual memory. A second partition is used to hold the top-level directory of your Ubuntu Linux installation, known as the root directory and mounted as “/” on your Ubuntu system. In the initial partitioning dialog, you select the free disk space in which you want to create a partition and click New Partition, which enables you to specify the type of file system that you want to use on the partition and whether it is a primary or extended partition. You can have only four primary partitions on a single disk drive — to create more than four partitions on a single disk drive, one of the four primary partitions must be defined as an extended partition, in which other (logical) partitions can then be defined. 10. Provide information about a user account that you want to create on this system. This account will have administrative privileges, so you should create your own account at this point. Enter your full name (for example, John Smith), a username (for example, jsmith) that you will use to log in as this user, a password (twice) for the new user, and a name for this computer (which can be anything). To accept the selected values and proceed to the next screen, click Forward. 11. If the installer finds user accounts from any partitions on your hard disk, it will ask if you want to import settings (such as from Firefox or Evolution) to your new Ubuntu installation. Select any accounts for which you want to import information and click Forward. 12. A confirmation screen summarizes the installation options that you have selected. To begin the installation, click Install. You can click Back to return to previous screens and change the values that you selected, or click Cancel to abort the installation process without changing anything on your system. If you select Forward, the Ubuntu installer begins the installation process. When the process is complete, the installer ejects the CD, reminds you to remove it from your system’s CD drive, and asks you to press Enter to reboot your system. 13. When installation is complete, the Desktop CD installer displays an Installation Complete dialog that confirms a successful installation. When you see this dialog, you can either click Continue Using the live CD to continue experimenting with Ubuntu from the CD, or click Restart Now to reboot your system and begin running Ubuntu directly from your system’s hard drive(s).

When you boot your system, Ubuntu displays a splash screen and progress dialog as it boots, followed by a graphical login screen. Congratulations — you’re running Ubuntu Linux! Ubuntu systems automatically run a graphical application called the Update Manager to notify you when system updates are available and to simplify retrieving and installing those updates. If updates to your system are available, the Update Manager displays a message to this effect and provides an icon at the right of the top panel that you can select to install those updates and keep your system current. You will need to provide your password in order to perform this (or any other) administrative operation. You can also check for updates manually at any time by selecting the System ➪ Administration ➪ Update Manager menu item.

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To add other software packages, you can open the Synaptic Package Manager Window (select System ➪ Administration ➪ Synaptic Package Manager) or Add/Remove Applications window (select System ➪ Administration ➪ Add/Remove Programs). Using Synaptic, you can add the software you want individually. Software not available on the CD will be downloaded from the Internet (provided you have an active Internet connection).

Starting with Ubuntu On the surface, Ubuntu is not very different in appearance from other Linux desktop systems using GNOME. Underneath, the tools for managing your software packages are the same as you would expect with Debian systems. Many of the differences are subtle and do a lot to make using Linux easier for the end user. Log in using the username and password you entered during installation. Figure 17-4 shows an example of an Ubuntu desktop that uses an alternate Ubuntu desktop background.

FIGURE 17-4 The Ubuntu desktop incorporates GNOME with ease-of-use additions.

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Trying Out the Desktop With the latest GNOME interface, menus are available on the top panel. You won’t have all the applications you would expect from a full-featured desktop system. However, you can easily add lots of other applications from the Internet (as described later). A good way to familiarize yourself with the Ubuntu GNOME desktop is to check out some of the menus. ■

On the upper-left panel, the following categories of software are available from the Applications menu (I’ve added some notes about additional applications that you can grab from other locations): ■

Accessories — From this menu, select some basic desktop utilities that are part of the GNOME project. Choose Archive Manager to launch the File Roller application. File Roller provides a simple GUI interface that is useful for backing up personal files in a variety of archive and compression types. Text Editor starts the gedit graphical text editor (so you don’t have to use the unintuitive vi editor to edit plain text documents). To go to a shell, you can launch the Terminal application from this menu. Other Accessories include a Calculator, Character Map (for mapping special keyboard characters), and Dictionary.

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Games — Under the Games menu, you have a selection of about 17 GNOME games. Some are similar to ones you would find on a Windows desktop (for example, Mines, AisleRiot Solitaire, and FreeCell Solitaire). There are also Tetris-like games (Gnometris) and board games (Mahjongg). You don’t get any of the more demanding open source games (such as Tux Racer) or networked games (such as the BZFlag networked tank battle game), but these can easily be installed using the Synaptic Package Manager.

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Graphics — The Ubuntu desktop install includes the GIMP open source graphic manipulation application. It also includes the F-Spot Photo Manager for managing collections of digital photographs, and the gThumb Image Viewer. To import images from a scanner, Ubuntu includes the XSame image scanning application. No document viewers are included here, but Evince (which can be used to view PostScript and PDF files) and the more traditional Adobe Acrobat viewer can be installed using Synaptic.

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Internet — Popular, standard open source Internet clients can be launched from this menu. The Ekiga Softphone application enables you to make voice-over-IP phone calls directly from your Ubuntu system. Evolution (a resource-intensive but full-featured mail client and personal information manager) can be used for reading and managing your e-mail. Firefox is the default Ubuntu Web browser and Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) is used for instant messaging. This menu also includes a Terminal Server Client if you need to connect to Microsoft Windows Terminal servers (in the rare event that you still need access to a Microsoft Windows system).

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Office — A full set of OpenOffice.org office productivity applications is included with Ubuntu. Selections include OpenOffice.org Calc (spreadsheet), Draw (drawing and flowcharts), Impress (presentations), Math (formulas and equations), and Writer (word processing). OpenOffice.org Database lets you create and access a database.

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Sound & Video — Ubuntu provides a movie player, the Sound Juicer CD player and ripper, the Rhythmbox Music Player for online audio, the Serpentine CD creator, and the Sound Recorder audio recording application. Like other commercial Linux distributions,

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Ubuntu doesn’t include the software needed to play MP3 music out of the box. However, if you try to play MP3 music from Rhythmbox or some other music players, you are asked if you want to add these capabilities from the Ubuntu repositories. The movie player included with Ubuntu (and other GNOME desktops) is the Totem Movie Player. Additional non–open source codecs are needed to enable that video player to play commercial DVD movies. Movie players such as xine and MPlayer, whose use requires codecs that cannot be freely distributed, are not included with Ubuntu by default, but can be added through the Ubuntu repositories. ■

The Places menu keeps track of places you want to go, lets you connect to remote servers, and lets you see (and, if you like, connect to) recently opened documents. There is also an option available to search your system for files.

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The System menu provides selections for changing desktop preferences and doing system administration tasks.

Adding More Software While Ubuntu manages to install around 2GB of applications from a single Ubuntu CD, it’s still only 2GB. By contrast, other implementations with multiple CDs in a set can install about 7GB of applications or more. To add more software to Ubuntu, you can use the common Debian packaging tools (apt-get, aptitude, and even dpkg). You can also use the Synaptic Package Manager for adding and removing software packages, which provides a friendly graphical interface, a handy Search function to help you find packages, and many other usability improvements over the command-line tools. To open the Synaptic Package Manager window, select System ➪ Administration ➪ Synaptic Package Manager. Figure 17-5 shows the Synaptic Package Manager window.

FIGURE 17-5 Synaptic Package Manager displays and installs Ubuntu software.

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Using Synaptic Package Manager, you can install more software by selecting the Not Installed entry in the next column, and then selecting the package you want to install on the left. With one or more packages selected, select Apply, and the software packages you selected will be downloaded from an Internet repository and installed. As Ubuntu is delivered, it will check only official Ubuntu software repositories to find and download the software you add to Ubuntu. There are times, however, when you want to add communitybuilt software that is outside the official distribution, in areas referred to as Universe and Multiverse: ■

Universe — Packages stored in Ubuntu Universe repositories include software that is not yet stable enough to be officially included in the project. Although the software has been built against Ubuntu libraries by the Ubuntu community, and will work well in most cases, it comes without guarantee of support or security fixes.

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Multiverse — Packages in Multiverse repositories contain software that is not free. This means that the software licensing might not meet Ubuntu requirements, the software may be encumbered by patent issues, or that only binary versions are available. Users are encouraged to research licensing and other legal issues themselves before using software from these repositories.

Follow these steps to add the Universe and Multiverse repositories to Synaptic Package Manager so that you can use them to get additional Ubuntu software that simply might not be stable enough to be part of the Ubuntu release: 1. From the Synaptic Package Manager main window, select Settings ➪ Repositories. The Software Sources window appears, displaying the software repositories that are active for your system, as shown in Figure 17-6. FIGURE 17-6 Add repositories to get software from Universe or outside the official distribution.

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2. Select the Community-maintained Open Source software (Universe) or Software restricted by copyright or legal issues (Multiverse) repositories to enable you to explore or install software from them. (These repositories might already be enabled.) 3. Click Close to close this dialog and return to Synaptic. You will see a confirmation dialog, alerting you to update Synaptic’s package list. Click OK. 4. Select Reload from the Synaptic Package Manager main window. Software from the added repositories now appears in the list of software you can install in your system.

At this point, you can install any of the software that was added to your software list. Keep in mind, however, that because software in the Universe and Multiverse repositories is not supported by Ubuntu, it will not receive official patches or security updates from the Ubuntu development team. In other words, you are on your own (aside from asking for help on the Ubuntu forums or from the open source community in general). If you want to stray further from the officially supported Ubuntu software, you can add custom repositories to your Ubuntu repository list. This is where you need to be particularly careful, so be sure to read the caution before proceeding. As with any Linux distribution, any time you use a repository other than the official repositories supported by that distribution, you should carefully scrutinize that repository. Unofficial repositories can break software compatibility, can contain software that you cannot use legally, and might even contain malicious software. Although it is still no guarantee of safety, check Ubuntu forums and mailing lists to find outside repositories that others have found to be reliable before using them yourself. Also, look for repositories that are specific to your version of Ubuntu because software from earlier Ubuntu releases or Debian-specific releases may not work.

CAUTION

To add a custom repository to Ubuntu, do the following from the Synaptic Package Manager window: 1. Select Settings ➪ Repositories. The Software Sources window appears. 2. Select the Third-Party tab. 3. Click Add. You are asked to add a complete line identifying the repository. 4. Type the line identifying the repository that contains the outside software you want to install. (The following is an example of a line identifying a fictitious repository.) deb http://ubuntu.example.com/ubuntu eft main

5. Click Add Source to have the line you just created added to your list of Ubuntu software repositories. 6. Click Close in the Software Sources dialog. You are warned that your repository information changed and that you can now reload your package list. 7. Click Close.

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At this point, you can install any packages that appear in your new package list. (Click Not Installed in the left column to see any packages that have not yet been installed from any of the repositories identified in your repository list.)

Getting More Information about Ubuntu Ubuntu’s popularity has led to many online resources for supporting it. One of the best places to start learning more about Ubuntu or finding answers to specific questions is the Ubuntu Forums site (www.ubuntuforums.org). To begin participating in that site, I suggest you read the usage guidelines and policies in the Ubuntu Forums FAQ at http://ubuntuforums.org/ faq.php?faq=policy. This FAQ describes conduct rules and suggests the best ways of having your technical support questions answered. As with most forums, browsing through topics of interest and doing keyword searches are good ways to find the information you need. There are a few resources from the Ubuntu forums that are particularly useful for someone starting out with Ubuntu. I recommend the following: ■

FAQs, HowTo, Tips, & Tricks (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay .php?f=100) — This forum lists common steps that many people do after installing Ubuntu, such as adding support for certain video cards or multimedia software.

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Absolute Beginner Talk (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=73) — Posts in this forum can help you understand what Linux is all about and whether or not Ubuntu will suit your needs. You can ask very basic questions here as well.

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Ubuntu Cafe (http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=11) — To catch the spirit of the Ubuntu community, you can check out the Ubuntu Cafe forum and get a taste of what’s on people’s minds.

The Ubuntu community also has a wiki (https://wiki.ubuntu.com) that continues to gain useful content for people using Ubuntu. Currently, the wiki includes areas for Ubuntu documentation, community information, support for different languages, events, and much more. There are also specific areas devoted to each Ubuntu release.

Summary Ubuntu is certainly the rising star of Linux distributions. Ubuntu started with Debian (one of the most respected but challenging distributions for beginners), simplifying the packaging and installation. It has demonstrated a commitment to frequent, well-designed, and supported releases. Today, Ubuntu is far more than a Debian spin-off, with its own community, advocates, and well-established development and maintenance groups.

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Using a single installation CD, a user can install a set of useful desktop software or a streamlined server system. Ubuntu’s graphical installer greatly simplifies the installation process by combining a graphical installer with a live distribution that you can run directly from the CD, which has made it easier than ever to test-drive and install Linux. Along with the growth in popularity of Ubuntu has come an active community of developers and users. To become involved with Ubuntu, a good place to start is with community forums and the Ubuntu wiki.

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I

n September 2003, the world’s leading Linux distribution, Red Hat Linux, disappeared.

IN THIS CHAPTER Digging into Fedora

Red Hat, Inc., the company that created Red Hat Linux, divided its development efforts in two directions: the Fedora Project, which produces the Fedora operating system (originally called Fedora Core), and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The split came from trying to better serve two diverse groups with one operating system. Fedora focused on encouraging the open source development community interested in helping develop and test software that would one day go into Red Hat products. Red Hat Enterprise Linux focused on the needs of paying customers who needed enterprise computing solutions.

Going forward with Fedora Installing Fedora

The Fedora 10 GNOME live/install CD is included on the DVD that comes with this book. You can try out the live version and then install a working Fedora desktop system from this DVD, using descriptions in Appendix A and the “Installing Fedora” section later in this chapter. If you don’t have a DVD drive, you can get the software on CDs by downloading them from the Internet (http://fedoraproject.org/ get-fedora) and burning them to CD, as described in Appendix A.

ON the DVD-ROM

Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux both come from a base of code that stems from the Red Hat Linux legacy. The two distributions have different goals and audiences and may drift farther apart over time. For the time being, however, Fedora is a community-driven distribution that is intended to include the latest Linux technology. Fedora is used as the basis for Red Hat Enterprise Linux releases.

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Although Fedora is primarily sponsored by Red Hat, Inc. and staffed by Red Hat employees, the Fedora Project encourages community leadership and involvement. The latest Fedora includes many more features than Red Hat Enterprise Linux, but those features have less guarantee of stability and no guarantee of support. However, important decisions about the direction of Fedora are still very much under the control of Red Hat, Inc. Likewise, Red Hat owns Fedora trademarks and makes legal decisions for Fedora based on its own legal counsel. Nearly all financial support for Fedora comes from Red Hat. Fedora follows the legacy of Red Hat Linux. The final version of Red Hat Linux was version 9. Fedora Core 1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 followed Red Hat Linux 9. At the time of this writing, Fedora 10 (the “Core” having been dropped) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 are the latest versions of those two operating systems.

NOTE

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which is actually represented by multiple products for desktop, server, and workstation computer systems, is licensed commercially. Red Hat puts all its documentation, training, and support efforts behind RHEL, which it sells to customers in the form of subscriptions. The intent is to have RHEL be a rock-solid Linux system that can be deployed across entire enterprises. Despite the confusion it unleashed by dumping its flagship Red Hat Linux line and fears by some that Red Hat might become another Microsoft, Red Hat is still the dominant player when it comes to commercial Linux products. Many people have been happy to upgrade their critical Linux systems to Red Hat Enterprise Linux products. In fact, when Microsoft announced its patent agreement with Novell, Red Hat was reported to have turned down a similar offer of cooperation with Microsoft, calling such an arrangement an “innovation tax.” So, Red Hat, which was once viewed by some in the free software community as a threat to the free software movement, is now being viewed more often as a great defender of free and open source software rights. In fact, Fedora has a reputation for its extraordinary commitment to remain freely redistributable and as free as possible from patent-encumbered software. To its credit, Red Hat has managed to become a profitable venture while making some remarkable contributions to the open source effort. Releasing its installer (Anaconda) and software packaging tools (RPM Package Management) under the GNU Public License (GPL) has enabled other Linux distributions to use and enhance those features. Within Red Hat Linux and now Fedora, Red Hat, Inc. has worked hard to include only software that could be freely distributed (removing most software with patent and copyright issues). Despite continued emphasis from Red Hat, Inc. that Fedora comes with no guarantees, Fedora is an excellent Linux distribution. I know of universities that have deployed hundreds of Fedora desktop systems in their computer labs and small companies that run their businesses exclusively with Fedora. Even if you prefer to bet your business on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora is a great way to evaluate and use technology that is in all Linux distributions from Red Hat. Features in the current Fedora system are those that are being prepared for a later release of RHEL. Both Fedora and RHEL are discussed in this chapter, so you can determine which distribution is right for you.

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Digging into Features There are many opinions on why Red Hat Linux and other distributions from the Red Hat Linux legacy have been so popular. The following sections describe some features of Red Hat Linux distributions commonly believed to have led to its success and that now add to the popularity of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions.

Red Hat Installer (Anaconda) When many Linux distributions still had you struggling from the command line to get the distribution installed, Red Hat created its own installer called Anaconda. Anaconda includes both graphical and text-based procedures for installing Linux, and is one of the oldest graphical installers continuously shipping. When you’re done installing Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, you have the following: ■

A set of software packages installed that suits how you want to use your computer (as a desktop, workstation, server, or some custom configuration).

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Configured online software repositories. By identifying Fedora and third-party repositories, you can choose from thousands of software packages to easily download and install.

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Standard information, such as date, time, time zone, and language set.

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A configured mouse, keyboard, video card, and monitor.

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An appropriately partitioned hard disk.

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A configured network card and firewall, to immediately connect to a LAN.

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A configured boot loader, to define how Linux starts up.

In addition to being easy to use, Anaconda is loaded with features to make it easy to manage the installation of multiple RHEL or Fedora systems. For example, these power features are built into the Anaconda installer: ■

Network installs — After booting the install process, the actual Fedora or RHEL distribution can be on a network server that is accessible via a Web server (http), FTP server (ftp), or UNIX file server (NFS).

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Kickstart installs — It’s not so bad to sit there and click through the answers to run the installation of one Fedora system, but if you’re doing dozens or hundreds of installs (especially on similar computers), automating that task can be a major time-saver. Anaconda supports kickstart installs, for which you use a preconfigured kickstart file to answer the questions that come up during a Fedora or RHEL installation. If you answer all the questions in the file, you can launch the installation and have it run from start to finish without you in attendance.

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Upgrades — With an existing Fedora system installed, Anaconda enables you to easily upgrade to a newer Fedora system. A lot of nice features for saving backups of configuration files and logging the upgrade activities are built into that process. During an upgrade, Anaconda takes into consideration any dependency issues, so the upgraded software packages will have all the libraries and commands that the features in those packages need.

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Major enhancements to Anaconda have come with recent releases of Fedora. In particular, Anaconda now incorporates the yum facility for gathering, downloading, and installing packages. During initial installation, you can add multiple yum-enabled Fedora software repositories to install software from those repositories. You’ll find a detailed description of installing Fedora using the Anaconda installer at the end of this chapter.

Custom Spins, Install Sets, and Live CDs By extending Anaconda installer features to tools such as livecd-creator and pungi, you can create your own software repositories, live CDs, and custom software install CDs/DVDs. So if you want to create your own software (or grab software from outside the Fedora repositories) and package it up with Fedora, the Fedora Project has easy-to-use tools to help you do that. The resulting CD or DVD ISO images are referred to as custom spins. Using livecd-creator, you can select which software packages you want to use in your own live CD and which settings you want with it (user accounts, desktop settings, network configuration, and so on). With pungi, you create custom installation media, so your customers or friends can install exactly the system you offer them. Both livecd-creator and pungi can run from the same type of kickstart file used with Anaconda, allowing you to save the packages and settings you choose. So it becomes easy to update your custom spin by rerunning the build command with the kickstart file as updated packages become available. Custom spins created directly from the Fedora Project itself or from members of the community are already available. For example, there are Fedora live CDs featuring gaming, electronics tools, KDE desktops, and Creative Commons live content.

RPM Package Management All Red Hat and Fedora distributions use the RPM Package Management (RPM) software packaging format to store and maintain software. Fedora and RHEL contain a set of tools for installing, upgrading, maintaining, and querying software packages in RPM format. Essentially, the RPM software packages that are installed are maintained in a database, so you can list the contents of packages, view descriptions, and even check for tampering of the files in those packages. Using RPM, add-on software can also be easily included in and maintained for Fedora systems. So users who once had to know how to deal with tarballs and makefiles to compile their own software can now simply install an RPM package to get the features they want. With other Linux distributions (such as SUSE and Mandrake) also using RPM packaging, your RPM tool skills can help you manage software on those distributions as well.

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You can check out ongoing development of the RPM from the RPM project site (http://rpm.org). Fedora 10 includes a major upgrade to RPM 4.6. Improvements in RPM 4.6 include features to provide support for larger files, better compression, improved architecture dependency, and better clean-up of stale lock files. For end users, these improvements should result in better reliability, security and performance. Because of the popularity of Red Hat Linux systems, lots of software repositories and third-party software management tools have been created to further automate and simplify handling software in Red Hat systems. Tools such as yum (www.linux.duke.edu/projects/yum) and apt4rpm (http://apt4rpm.sourceforge.net) are available for updating selected software. As noted earlier, the yum facility forms the foundation for installing RPM packages in Fedora and RHEL. For several reasons, yum is usually preferred over the rpm command. First, it can be used to install from network repositories. Second, it can find and install dependent packages needed by the packages you request. And last, it is preferred because there are related tools for searching and managing repositories. Yum can also be used to install software from local media and, unlike RPM, resolve dependencies automatically.

Latest Desktop Technology By keeping up with the latest technologies, the Fedora Project helps users discover the latest innovations in desktop technology. In the past year, Fedora releases have featured major new desktop technologies such as KDE 4.1 and GNOME Online Desktop (described in Chapter 3). Fedora was the first major distribution to include KDE 4 as its default KDE environment. The most obvious new features include the ability of the new Plasma desktop to place widgets directly on the desktop. This allows mini-applications such as photo viewers, system monitors, and stock tickers to sit directly on the desktop. The Photon multimedia feature provides a single framework for KDE music and video applications. New Oxygen Artwork provides a whole new look to the KDE desktop. A lightweight file manager named Dolphin is now used as the default file manager. The goal of the GNOME Online Desktop is to provide a desktop suitable for running applications directly from the Web and storing information online. This allows the desktop to be the window to applications like Facebook, Gmail, Flickr, Netflix, and other online services. Figure 18-1 shows an example of the Online Desktop. By default, the Online Desktop opens the Firefox Web browser when started. It also includes the Sidebar on the left side of the screen — a panel of the applications you often run online.

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FIGURE 18-1 Fedora offers the GNOME Online Desktop.

System Configuration Tools Red Hat created a set of simplified, graphical tools for configuring and administering many basic administrative features in Red Hat systems. Using these tools, you can add printers, configure your network, add users, set up your sound card, and tune up your video card, to name a few of the features they cover. Red Hat’s graphical configuration tools (described in Chapter 10) can be launched from the Administration menu or from the command line. Several releases ago, the beginnings of these configuration tools’ command names changed from redhat-config to system-config. For example, the tool to configure your network in Fedora is now called system-config-network (instead of redhat-config-network).

NOTE

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Going Forward with Fedora Fedora has done a good job of serving the open source software development community and those who want to repackage Linux for different purposes. Fedora is particularly good if you want to use it in the following ways: ■

Personal desktop — If you are on the technical side and want to have the latest Linux technology, Fedora can be a great choice. You may have to deal with more software updates and some less-complete features than with other Linux systems. However, that can be a small price for users who are always looking to try out the latest desktop features available.

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Personal server — Many people use Fedora as a personal file, print, or Web server with great results. Incorporating SELinux security can help make a Fedora server among the most secure server platforms available today, while still providing cutting-edge server features.

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Build your own Linux system — By building your own live CD or install CD, you can repackage Fedora to have exactly the software you want. You can even build in your own software packages and repositories with Fedora tools. Because Fedora is made so that people can redistribute it, you have fewer concerns about potential copyright or patent infringements.

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Develop software — Many people use Fedora for developing their open source software projects. Using Fedora, software developers can test their own software on the latest systems. For enterprise software products, developers can test out features that will eventually make their way into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Linus Torvalds himself uses Fedora, primarily because of its excellent support for PowerPC hardware.

The Fedora Project remains committed to the principle that everything in Fedora should be freely redistributable and that almost everything should be open source (with the exception of some firmware drivers, such as wireless LAN card drivers). While not offering some non-free software (particularly multimedia codecs) makes Fedora less attractive to some casual users, true open source enthusiasts have found Fedora to be a trustworthy distribution. Beyond its value to the development community, many non-technical people use Fedora. Statistics gathered by the Fedora Project (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics) show that Fedora system updates were downloaded from more than 700,000 unique IP addresses during the first 10 weeks that Fedora 9 was released. Because many Fedora systems are behind NAT firewalls, with multiple systems behind a single IP address, the number of installed Fedora 9 systems is probably much higher than that. If Fedora sounds interesting to you, the following sections describe some ways you can get involved. To become an official member of the Fedora community, you can go to the Join Fedora page (http://fedoraproject.org/join-fedora), which will lead you through opportunities with the Fedora Project and help you sign up.

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Growing Community Support for Fedora Despite some confusion about the future and direction of the Fedora Project, new initiatives and Web sites have popped up to support Fedora. Two of the best new official assets of the Fedora Project are FedoraProject.org (the official Fedora Project site) and FedoraForum.org (which has been recognized as the official end-user forum of choice). FedoraProject.org is the site for official information about schedules, goals, and initiatives that make up the Fedora Project. If you want to become involved in Fedora-related projects, such as Ambassadors, Marketing, Live CD, or Documentation, FedoraProject.org is the focal point for pursuing those initiatives. FedoraForum.org features news, galleries, and (as you might guess) forums for sharing questions and information about Fedora. As of this writing, FedoraForum.org had more than 100,000 members. The Unofficial Fedora FAQ (www.fedorafaq.org) has become an excellent resource for getting answers to the most constant, nagging questions about Fedora. This FAQ is a good place to start for learning how to get all those things you need (MP3 players, viewing DVD movies, instant messaging, video players, access to your Windows XP NTFS file system, and so on). On the whole, the total amount of software available and greater stability among software repositories has meant that it’s possible to get a much better total experience with Fedora than was possible even with Red Hat Linux.

Joining Fedora Special Interest Groups People in the Fedora community join together into special interest groups (SIGs) to pursue common goals with Fedora. Some of the groups stay in touch using mailing lists, regular meetings on IRC channels, and Fedoraproject.org wiki pages. Here are a few Fedora SIGs you might find interesting: ■

One Laptop Per Child SIG (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/OLPC) — You may have heard of the OLPC project’s (www.laptop.org) goal of bringing low-cost laptops to children around the world. But you may not know that the operating system inside those laptops is Fedora. The Fedora OLPC SIG explores ways for the Fedora Project to provide software and infrastructure support to OLPC.

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Games SIG (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Games) — The Fedora Games SIG has done a great job packaging open source and liberated commercial games to run on Fedora. To participate, you can join the fedora-games-list mailing list, chat on the #fedora-games channel on irc.freenode.net, or just check out the Games SIG wiki page.

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artTeam (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Artwork) — The Fedora artTeam provides an avenue for creative people to contribute to Fedora. While encouraging the use of open source tools, the artTeam has created logos, backgrounds, promo banners, posters, and other art to support Fedora.

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Education SIG (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Education) — The Fedora Education SIG is working to get more educational applications into Fedora, and then produce a Fedora Education Spin to efficiently distribute that software.

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Spins SIG (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Spins) — The Spins SIG was created to help people create their own custom spins of Fedora software. Anyone can create a spin and submit it for approval from the Spins SIG. If it meets Fedora Project requirements, the spin could be hosted by Fedora or simply have the instructions for producing the spin (typically a kickstart file) stored by Fedora for others to use.

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Other interesting SIGs include the Fedora Robotics SIG, Astronomy SIG, Embedded Systems SIG, and Store SIG. There are also efforts you can join to improve documentation, the wiki, translations, marketing, and other areas.

Forums and Mailing Lists If you want to get into the flow of the Fedora community, I recommend starting with the Fedora Project’s own mailing lists. You can choose the Fedora mailing list that interests you from the Red Hat Mailing Lists page (http://redhat.com/mailman/listinfo). Start with the Fedora-list or Fedora-announce-list mailing list.

Fedora Comes of Age Most people who follow Linux would agree that Fedora has become a strong, viable Linux system in its own right, and not just a test release for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The project has continued to grow and flourish, and the current Fedora release is but the latest incarnation in a great line. Figure 18-2 shows a standard desktop. While still laying the foundation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora has also added some fun and powerful features to distinguish itself from other Linux systems. Here are some examples: ■

PackageKit — In the past year, Fedora has dropped its graphical tools for installing and updating software (pup and pirut) in favor of the PackageKit facility. While Fedora is still shaking some bugs out of it, PackageKit offers simplified tools for getting new packages and software updates. A PackageKit applet in the panel alerts you when updates are available and lets you select to get and install them.

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NetworkManager — The NetworkManager facility has recently been added as the default tool for starting and stopping your network connections. By starting the NetworkManager service and selecting the NetworkManager applet in the panel, you can see the wireless devices that have been detected and select which one you want to connect to. You can also start and stop any wired network interfaces.

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FIGURE 18-2 Fedora includes the GNOME or KDE desktop, and many games.

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KVM and Xen virtualization — The ability to run multiple operating systems instances on one computer is just the beginning of the promise that virtualization brings to Linux. In today’s server computing model, often an entire server is devoted to running a particular application that may be tied to a particular operating system. As a result, the entire computer may be underutilized if it is not a high-demand application. With virtualization, you have the opportunity to run multiple instances, including an entire operating system, an application, and a data combination. Those instances (called guests) can